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.
‘Who is fatty?’ articulated Joseph, smiling. ‘No idea, old chap.’
The rocking chair thudded forward as George vacated it. ‘I think he’d better go to bed … I think my father would like him to go to bed.’
‘Are you receiving telepathic information or something? Is that it?’ Joseph wagged his finger at George, not sure if his voice was sufficiently jocular. He didn’t want to upset George. Changing the subject he asked, as if interested, which he wasn’t, ‘Is his name really Balfour, George? I mean, is it Balfour something, or something Balfour?’
Hearing his name, the tool-fitter swung his head from side to side.
‘The declaration of the Jewish state,’ said George at the doorway, propping it open with his back, watching the sway of his scarf ends in the night air.
‘He’s off again,’ moaned Balfour.
‘His name is Edgar Balfour,’ said George. ‘I think he ought to go to bed. He’s been ill for a long time.’
‘Ill?’ Dotty regarded the flushed Balfour. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Just ill.’
Balfour tried to concentrate. Joseph was saying something, something about the people due to arrive tomorrow. He must attend. There might, who knows, be a message.
‘She’s a blonde,’ said Joseph, ‘and he’s in some sort of business. He used to be in the army. Had his buttock shot off in Italy.’
George said without reproach, listening to an owl hoot somewhere behind the long barn, ‘You didn’t say there was a woman coming.’
‘Didn’t I? Oh well, they’re married, George. It’s not too bad.’
Dear God, thought Balfour, practically sobered with shock. Not two men but a man and wife – a woman with yellow hair and a man with a mutilated arse, in his hut, sleeping in the same room as himself. He removed his hands from his face and gazed at Joseph hopelessly.
‘Bed.’ Joseph yawned, gripping the edges of his chair to lever his body upright. ‘Tomorrow, Mr Whatsit, we really must have a long talk about your social work, old chap.’
I must try to be cheerful and off-hand, thought Dotty, her fingers still clasping her empty glass. Either that or I must pretend to be asleep.
Order and growth, thought George, staring out into the dark field, thinking of his remembrance trees, his thousand memorials, each one named in memory of a Jew who had never reached the Promised Land.
They moved in several directions to bed. Kidney was dispatched to the barn, taken to the door by lamplight and thrust inside. ‘Don’t wake Roland,’ hissed Joseph fiercely, shutting him away for the night.
‘Good night – good night,’ they told each other, close now that they were about to separate.
George lit a candle for Dotty and Joseph because he needed the lamp to guide the unsteady Balfour down the slope and across the stream to Hut 2. ‘You can have carpets you can afford at Cyril Lord,’ sang the stumbling Balfour in the darkness.