Read Another part of the wood Online

Authors: Beryl Bainbridge

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Fiction in English, #Poetry

Another part of the wood (4 page)

‘My electric razor. I’m trying to mend it.’

‘But you’ve got a beard.’

‘I know.’ He probed with the nail file at the veins of red wire, sucking a strand of beard between his full lips.

‘William hasn’t got a beard,’ said Roland. William was his mother’s friend, who missed his last bus home sometimes and was
in the bathroom in the morning, standing before the gold mirror, scraping soap off his chin.

‘Oh well,’ said Joseph. ‘I like to keep my neck tidy.’

‘It’s a super toilet,’ said Roland. He lay on the floor and spread his arms wide as if he were swimming.

‘Lavatory, not toilet,’ Joseph told him. ‘Toilet’s too damn refined.’

‘They say toilet at school.’ To add weight he added, ‘Mummy says toilet.’ He moved his legs up and down in the invisible sea.
‘It’s all black and leaves all round the door – and that bastard Kidney sitting on the can of germs.’

‘Don’t you like Kidney?’ Joseph sat back on his heels and spat shreds of wire out of his mouth.

‘Yes,’ said Roland. He stopped swimming and looked round the hut. ‘Don’t expect there’s anywhere to put your plug here.’ He
looked carefully at all the places where plugs might go if this were home.

For a moment his father was silent. Then he shrugged his shoulders and opened the lid of the basket and dropped the plug and
nail file inside. ‘How right you are,’ he said, getting up from his knees and wiping dust from his trousers.

Kidney entered the hut and saw Joseph at the mirror, legs braced wide apart, combing his hair back behind his ears.

‘Wash your hands,’ Joseph said, putting the comb away. ‘We’re going over to George’s hut for tea.’ He avoided looking directly
at Kidney. Roland had opened the wicker basket and was holding the useless plug in his hands. ‘Put that down,’ his father
told him.

Blushing, Roland dropped the plug into the basket and fiddled with the strap of his brown sandal. He didn’t like being shouted
at in front of Kidney.

At the far end of the hut, at the sink, Kidney dried his hands
carefully on the red towel which Joseph had placed on a hook above the draining board. The towel was one from the flat that
Joseph lived in, that he lived in too. He used it in the mornings before going to college with Joseph. He used to go to college
every day, but recently Joseph hadn’t come into his room in the mornings and he had lain there in his bed listening to the
sound of Joseph doing his exercises, the tea being made, the soft buzzing noise of the electric shaver as Joseph tidied his
neck and throat, the footsteps running downstairs, the slam of the door and the final sound of the car being started. Only
then did he leave his bed and go to the window, staring along the street in the direction in which Joseph had gone, imagining
he saw the vapour of the exhaust still rising in the empty road. Then he would wander from room to room, not knowing what
to do, picking up the book of poems given him by Joseph, not reading them – he had never read them – just holding the thin
book in his hands. Sometimes Dotty came out of the bedroom in a long nightgown and a face white as chalk, not looking at him
at all, not seeing him, as if he didn’t exist, looking only for the box of matches. He turned to face Joseph, nervously crumpling
the towel in his rubbed-dry hands.

‘Do you want me to come?’

‘Of course, you silly bastard.’

‘I thought I might stay here and read a book. I don’t feel very hungry.’ Kidney looked down at the floor, lost in a vision
of being alone while they had tea, sitting with a book, a good book, and reading all the words, alone in the empty hut.

Abruptly Joseph said, ‘Oh, stay if you want to,’ and strode out. Roland struggled to his feet and ran after him. Kidney heard
him call ‘Wait for me’. Then Joseph’s head appeared at the window. ‘Come on, Kidney,’ he said gently. ‘Come and have some
tea with us.’ Almost tenderly he added, ‘We want you to come.’

Smiling, Kidney lumbered out of the hut.

2

After a supper of sausages, followed by cups of coffee, Roland had been put to bed in the long barn at the back of the hut.
He had protested at being couched out there, alone in the field. Privately Dotty had agreed with him, thinking he was too
little and too spoiled to rest easy away from the main hut. She had kept her opinion to herself, fearing Joseph might remember
why it was the child couldn’t sleep with him, deciding at the recollection that it was unjust, and that she, not his lovely
boy, must sleep in the barn with only a strip of brown carpet edged with mud between her and the restless Kidney. Guiltily
she watched Roland carried from the hut in his father’s arms.

‘Look up there,’ Joseph entreated, standing in the damp grass under the black sky, wanting Roland to observe the stars. But
Roland wouldn’t raise his head. In the darkness a bird flew from a swaying tree. Roland made sounds of misery. Once in bed,
laid down in the puffy darkness, Joseph told him to be a good boy and go to sleep.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said, stroking the child’s head, ‘I’m going to take you up the mountain. Just you and me. We’ll be explorers.
We’ll go very early,’ he continued, soothing himself as much as the child, ‘and we’ll see the tower and we’ll look down and
see the countryside spread out just like a map.’

‘I don’t like being here alone,’ whispered Roland in despair.

Joseph tucked the rough blankets more firmly round the boy. ‘You won’t be alone. Kidney is going to sleep in the other bed.
We’re all going to bed shortly.’ His voice receded towards the door. ‘Now go to sleep, Roland, and no more nonsense. I’m only
next door. You’re not alone … Good night, boy.’ To which Roland
wouldn’t reply, leaving his father no alternative but to shut the door and stumble back over the grass to the paraffin-lit
hut.

Roland, in bed, wiped at his face with the sheet and thought how cross his mother would be when he told her how frightened
he had been at night. Soundlessly his lips shaped the words betraying his father, and he saw her face looming before him,
eyes widening at the terrible story, her teeth set like pegs between her lips. ‘All alone, my little boy, left all alone.’
He looked up at the square of window above his head, trying to see the stars, but the glass was too thick and he didn’t dare
kneel upright in the bed. He remembered something his teacher had told him about stars, how they weren’t really there, only
the light coming down every night for ever. Maybe his mother would buy him a train set to make up for him being so unhappy
out there in the wood.

In the hut Joseph was trying to justify his treatment of his son. ‘You were an only child,’ he told the placid George. ‘Do
you feel you were deprived or lonely as a boy?’

‘No,’ said George.

Balfour, dabbing his eyes with a square of handkerchief, saw that Joseph was regarding him attentively. ‘Hay fever,’ he apologized
and blew his nose violently.

Dotty rose and went to the end of the hut. She pulled the wicker basket out from under the settee and rummaged inside. Crouched
sideways on her haunches, chin down, she looked like an athlete landing after a pole vault.

‘What are you doing?’ Joseph asked.

‘Getting the Chablis.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘Because I feel like a drink.’ She stood up and walked to the table, not putting down the wine, face sullen in the yellow
light. ‘I did buy it with my own money. Have you a bottle opener, George?’

Balfour went into the kitchen, taking with him the paraffin lamp, leaving the others in near-darkness, finding the corkscrew
hanging from a nail on the wall. He thought, not for the first time, surveying the pan scrubbers and ladles, the weighing
scales, the cake trays, the jars of herbs in a row on the shelf, that there were more things in this hut than in most normal
houses. He brought the corkscrew and the light back into the room.

‘Here we are,’ he said, giving Dotty the corkscrew and going back for the glasses. Dotty withdrew the cork herself.

‘Must be fair,’ she said, pouring the colourless liquid into the tumblers.

‘Why only four glasses?’ asked Joseph in triumph, anxious to put her in the wrong. He turned to look at the corner of the
hut where Kidney was sitting, face completely in shadow, only his legs and feet illuminated.

Balfour hurried to fetch another glass from the kitchen.

When they were all drinking, Joseph leaned forward in his chair and looking directly at Balfour asked, ‘What do you do?’

‘I’m in a factory.’ Tongue thick with alarm, Balfour moistened his worker lips. ‘That is, I’m a tool-fitter.’ He drank quickly,
disliking the taste, hearing Joseph say, ‘A tool-fitter. How very obscene, but fascinating, I’m sure. A man who works with
his hands.’

‘Not with his hands,’ said George. ‘With machines.’

Gratefully Balfour echoed, ‘That’s right. I work with machines.’

‘It’s not very fascinating either,’ added George, swilling his wine round in the thick tumbler. ‘He’s been wanting to escape
for years. My father says – ’ his shoulders slumped somewhat, as some part of him always did at mention of Mr MacFarley – ‘that
Balfour is needed for better things than machines.’

Oh God, blasphemed the inward Balfour, hating to be reminded of the better things. He drank his wine, not noticing the taste
as much.

‘What things do you feel you are needed for?’ asked Joseph.

‘I-I don’t feel that I’m needed at all,’ said Balfour. ‘It’s Mr MacFarley that seems to think that. I don’t think about it.’

‘Ah come now, tell me,’ Joseph persisted. ‘Tell me the truth. What do you do with your life apart from your machines?’

‘I w-work with young people,’ said Balfour. Then, in a rush, feeling liberated by the wine and compelled to answer, he added:
‘We have a c-club and we take lads into the country and we bring them here.’ Giving credit where credit was due, he continued:
‘Mr and Mrs MacFarley and George let us have the huts and we let them climb the mountain and we try to help them appreciate
the c-countryside.’

‘It sounds marvellous,’ said Joseph, ‘and very unselfish. Now me, I’m afraid – I’d find it difficult to devote my time to
young people in that way for so little return.’

Dotty banged her glass down contemptuously on the table.

Balfour wanted to ask Joseph what he was doing with Kidney if it wasn’t to help him, but he didn’t know exactly what Kidney’s
problems were and he couldn’t guess the kind of returns Joseph meant. Instead he said, gulping his Chablis: ‘But there’s enormous
returns. It’s very r-rewarding, believe me. I could tell you a lot of things about that. Very r-rewarding.’ He was aware that
his speech was becoming unsteady. Shaking his head, he affirmed: ‘Very rewarding. If you c-could see the kind of homes I go
into in the course of my d-duties you’d know what I mean. You see, I go to some houses to f-find out why some kid hasn’t been
to the club and there’s a bloody big tenement block of flats with a stone courtyard like a kind of barrack square and I …’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ interrupted Joseph with enthusiasm. ‘Terrible architecture, no sense of community life, no
feeling of life at all. How can people grow and flourish with such ugliness all around them? How can their lives possibly
have meaning?’

‘Light is needed,’ said George, ‘and space and a better use of concrete. Ideally they should build their own dwellings to
their own needs.’

Jesus, thought Balfour, hanging his head in defeat.

Joseph continued, ‘You see, in proper planning they’d know that people need to be in a community. They’d know that ugly surroundings
imprison a man and that beauty liberates him.
They’d use colours and play areas and they’d leave the trees standing.’

‘The trees should be left,’ said Balfour. ‘I agree they should leave the trees. B-but half the bloody kids in the flats would
pull them out by the roots. And they did try a playground bit in the new flats and a square of green, down in Windsor Street,
and every morning you couldn’t see the grass for the f-french letters.’

Joseph laughed, leaning his head back and bringing his hands down hard on his knees to express his approval.

‘It’s more than grass that’s needed,’ Balfour said. ‘It’s not a question of needing to flourish. It’s more just l-living that’s
wanted. There’s this woman, Mrs Conran, with a lad called Billy – she’s got a grown daughter with two kids of her own in the
same two-roomed flat and Billy suddenly doesn’t turn up at the club or school for that matter. So I go to see her and I say,
putting my foot in the door, “Hallo, Mrs Conran,” – they love that – “How’s your Billy? Wondered why he hasn’t been to the
club like.” And she says, “Our Billy’s sick, Mr Whatsit.” And I say, “Can I come in and have a word with him, Mrs Conran?”
And she says, “He’s sick like, Mr Whatsit.” Anyway I get into the place and in a cot in the room is Mrs Conran’s daughter’s
two kids, both under three, sucking milk from a Tizer bottle. Billy Conran’s lying on a blanket on the floor with his face
turned to the wall, and a bloody big growth just like a mushroom growing on the plaster above his head, and I say, “Not so
good, eh, Billy lad? Wondered why you didn’t come to the club like.” And Billy’s not saying a word because he can’t put two
words together anyway, and Mrs Conran says, “It’s like he don’t want to face the world, Mr Whatsit.” Can you beat that?’ Balfour
let the words keep coming. ‘And while I’m trying to figure that one out, in comes Mrs Conran’s daughter from the kitchen with
a fella and Ma Conran says, “Mr Whatsit’s here, Lil,” and Lil goes back into the kitchen with her drawers in her hand and
the bloke goes out of the door and Billy just lies there …’

‘There’ve been worse things,’ George said, ‘much worse things. Systematic killing.’

‘Oh Christ,’ groaned Balfour irritably. ‘Don’t start that again.’ He belched loudly.

‘I’ve not seen him like this before,’ said George.

Balfour raised his head in defiance, but it was suddenly too heavy for his neck and he leaned over his knees, thinking about
some baby in a bath that he had wanted to drown. He had wanted to flush the baby down the plug hole, fat legs kicking … going
bell-tinkle … whose baby …? ‘Who’s fatty?’ he asked Joseph, suddenly looking up.

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