by Ian Mcewan
It was dark and cold when I woke up. With my eyes closed I felt for the bedclothes. I had a confused memory of lying in the prefab. Was I still there? I had no idea how I came to be lying naked on a bare mattress. Someone was crying. Was it me? I knelt up to close the window and remembered suddenly that my mother had died a long time ago. At once everything fell into place and I lay down shivering and listened. The crying was soft and continuous like a moan and it came from the next room. It was soothing, and for a while I listened only to the sound. I had no curiosity beyond that. I stopped shivering and closed my eyes and immediately, as if a show had been delayed till I had settled down, I saw a set of vivid pictures. I opened my eyes briefly and saw the same images imposed on the darkness. I wondered why it was I needed to sleep so much. I saw a crowded beach on a very hot afternoon. It was time to go home. My mother and father were walking ahead of me carrying deck chairs and a bundle of towels. I could not keep up. The large, round pebbles hurt my feet. In my hand there was a stick with a windmill on the end. I was crying because I was tired and I wanted to be carried. My parents stopped to wait for me, but when I was within a few feet of them, they turned and went on. My crying became a long wail and other children stopped what they were doing to look at me. I let go of the windmill and when someone picked it up and offered it to me I shook my head and wailed louder. My mother gave her deck chair to my father and walked toward me. When she picked me up I found myself looking backward over her shoulder at a girl who held my windmill and stared at me. The breeze turned the bright sails and I desperately wanted it back, but already she was a long way beyond us and now we were on the pavement and my mother’s stride was rhythmic. I kept on crying to myself but my mother did not seem to hear.
This time I opened my eyes and woke completely. With the windows closed my small room was hot and airless. Next door Tom was still crying. I stood up and fell dizzily against the wardrobe. I opened it and felt for my clothes. The light bulb rolled out and broke on the floor. I swore in a loud whisper. I felt too stifled by both the darkness and lack of air to go on searching. I walked toward the door with my hands stretched out in front of me and my face screwed up. I stood on the landing, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the light. Downstairs Julie and Sue were talking. At the sound of my door opening Tom had gone silent, but now he started again, a forced, unconvincing kind of crying which Julie would take no notice of. Her bedroom door was open, and I went in quietly. The room was lit by a very weak bulb, and Tom did not notice me at first. He had kicked the blankets and sheets to the bottom of the cot and he lay on his back naked, looking up at the ceiling. The sound he was making was like a dull kind of singing. Sometimes he seemed to forget he was crying altogether and fell silent; then he remembered and began again louder. For five minutes or so I stood behind him listening. One arm was flung right behind his head and with the other hand he played with his penis, pulling it and rolling it between his forefinger and thumb.
“Wotcha,” I said. Tom tilted his head back and looked at me without surprise. Then his gaze returned to the ceiling and he resumed his crying. I leaned over the side of the cot and said roughly, “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you shut up?” Tom’s crying became the real, clucking kind, tears spilled onto the sheet by his head. “Wait,” I said and tried to lower the cot side. In the gloom I could not see how to release the catch. My brother drew a huge lungful of air and screamed. It was difficult to concentrate; I banged at the catch with my fist; I took hold of the vertical bars and shook them till the whole cot rocked. Tom started to laugh, something gave and the side dropped away.
In his baby voice he called, “Again! I want you to do that again.” I sat down at one end of the cot on the pile of sheets and blankets. We stared at each other, and presently he said in his ordinary voice, “Why haven’t you got any clothes on?”
I said, “Because I’m hot. “He nodded.
“I’m hot too.” He lay back with his arms folded behind his head, more like a sunbather now than an infant.
“Was that why you were crying? Because you were hot?”
He thought for a moment before nodding.
I said, “Crying makes you hotter.”
“I wanted Julie to come up. She said she would come up and see me.”
“Why did you want her to come up?”
“Because I wanted her to.”
“But why?” Tom clicked his tongue in exasperation.
“Because I wanted her.”
I folded my arms. I felt in the mood for an interrogation.
“Do you remember Mum?” He opened his mouth a little way and nodded. “Don’t you want her?”
“She’s dead,” Tom said indignantly. I settled down in the cot. Tom moved over to make room for my legs.
I said, “Even though she’s dead, don’t you wish she would come up and see you instead of Julie?”
“I’ve been in her room,” Tom boasted. “I know where Julie keeps the key.”
Her locked bedroom hardly ever entered my mind. When I thought of Mother I thought of the cellar. I said, “What do you do in there?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s in there?” There was a slight whine in Tom’s voice.
“Julie put everything away. All Mum’s things.”
“What did you want with Mum’s things?” Tom stared at me as if my question had no meaning. “You played with her things?” I asked.
Tom nodded and pursed his lips in imitation of Julie.
“We did dressing up and things.”
“You and Julie?” Tom giggled.
“Me and Michael, stupid!” Michael was Tom’s friend from the tower blocks.
“You dressed up in Mum’s clothes?”
“Sometimes we were Mummy and Daddy and sometimes we were Julie and you and sometimes we were Julie and Derek.”
“What did you do when you were me and Julie?” Again my question meant nothing to Tom. “I mean, what did you do?”
“Just play,” Tom said vaguely.
Because of the way the light was on his face, and because he had secrets, Tom seemed like a tiny, wise old man lying at my feet. I wondered if he believed in heaven. I said, “Do you know where Mum is now?”
Tom stared up at the ceiling and said, “In the cellar.”
“What do you mean?” I whispered.
“In the cellar. In that trunk under all that stuff.”
“Who told you that?”
“Derek said. He said you put her in there.” Tom turned on his side and put his thumb not in but near his mouth. I shook his ankle.
“When did he tell you that?” Tom shook his head. He never knew whether something happened yesterday or last week. “What else did Derek say?”
Tom sat up and grinned. “He said you keep pretending it’s a dog.” He laughed. “A dog!”
Tom covered himself with one corner of the sheet and rolled on his side again. He put the tip of his thumb between his lips, but his eyes remained open. I arranged a pillow behind my back. I liked it here in Tom’s bed. Everything I had just heard did not matter to me. I felt like raising the cot’s side and sitting all night. The last time I had slept here everything had been watched over and arranged. When I was four I had believed it was my mother who devised the dreams I had at night. If she asked me in the morning, as she sometimes did, what I had dreamed, it was to hear if I could tell the truth. I gave up the cot to Sue long before that, when I was two, but lying in it now it was familiar to me—its salty, clammy smell, the arrangement of the bars, an enveloping pleasure in being tenderly imprisoned. A long time passed. Tom’s eyes opened briefly and closed again. He sucked his thumb deeper into his mouth. I did not want him to fall asleep yet.
“Tom,” I whispered, “Tom. Why do you want to be a baby?”
He spoke in a thin whine as if he were about to weep.
“You’re squashing me, you are.” He kicked at me feebly from under the sheet. “You’re squashing me, and it’s my bed … you….” His voice f
ailed and his eyes closed firmly as his breathing settled into a deep rhythm. I watched him for a minute or so till a faint sound made me aware that I too was being watched from the doorway.
“Look at this,” Julie whispered to herself as she crossed the room. “Just look at you.” She punched me on the shoulder and put her hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter.
“Two bare babies!” She lifted and secured the side and, leaning her elbows over the cot, smiled at me in delight. She had put her hair up and long fine strands of it curled down by her ears from which hung earrings of brightly colored glass beads. “You sweet little thing.”
She stroked my head. Her white cotton blouse was unbuttoned down to the swell of her breasts and her skin was a deep, dull brown. She pursed her lips but her smile kept pulling them apart. The sweet, sharp smell of her perfume wrapped itself around me and I sat there grinning foolishly, staring into her eyes. For a joke I thought of putting my thumb in my mouth and lifted my hand to my face.
“Go on,” she encouraged, “don’t be afraid.” The flat taste of my own skin brought me back to myself.
“I’m getting out,” I said, and as I knelt up, Julie pointed through the bars.
“Look! It’s big!” and she laughed and made as if to grab me.
I climbed over the side, and while Julie covered Tom with a blanket, I edged toward the door, already regretting that I had brought our scene to an end. Julie caught me by the arm and steered me toward the bed.
“Don’t go away yet,” she said. “I want to talk to you.”
We sat facing each other. Julie’s eyes were wild and bright-looking. “You look lovely without your clothes,” she said. “Pink and white like an ice cream.” She touched my sunburned arm. “Is it sore?”
I shook my head and said, “What about your clothes?”
She undressed briskly. When her clothes were between us in a small pile on the bed, she nodded toward Tom and said, “What do you think of him? Don’t you think he’s happy?”
I said “yes” and told her what he had told me. Julie opened her mouth wide in pretend surprise.
“Derek’s known for ages. We haven’t been very good at keeping it a secret. What upsets him is that we don’t let him in on it.” She tittered into her hand. “He feels left out when we go on telling him it’s a dog.” She moved a little closer to me and wrapped her arms about her body. “He wants to be one of the family, you know, big smart daddy. He’s getting on my nerves.”
I touched her on the arm the way she had touched me. “Since he knows,” I said, “we might as well tell him. I feel a bit daft going on about that dog.” Julie shook her head and locked her fingers into mine.
“He wants to take charge of everything. He keeps talking about moving in with us.” She squared her shoulders and puffed out her chest. “What you four need is taking care of.” I took Julie’s other hand and we moved so that we sat with our knees touching. From the cot, which was right up against the bed, Tom murmured in his sleep and swallowed loudly. Julie was whispering now. “He lives with his mum in this tiny house. I’ve been there. She calls him Doodle and makes him wash his hands before tea.” Julie pulled her hands free and placed them on each side of my face. She glanced down between my legs. “She told me she irons fifteen shirts a week for him.”
“That’s a lot,” I said. Julie was squashing my face so that my lips pushed out like a bird’s beak.
“You used to look like this all the time,” she said, “and now you look like this.” She relaxed her hold.
I wanted us to keep talking. I said, “You haven’t done any running for a long time.”
Julie stretched a leg and laid it across my knee. We both looked at it as if it were a pet. I held the foot in both hands.
“Perhaps I’ll do some in the winter,” Julie said.
“Are you going back to school next week?” She shook her head.
“Are you?”
“No.”
We hugged each other and our arms and legs were in such a tangle that we fell sideways onto the bed. We lay with our arms round each other’s necks and our faces close together. For a long time we talked about ourselves.
“It’s funny,” Julie said, “I’ve lost all sense of time. It feels like it’s always been like this. I can’t really remember how it used to be when Mum was alive and I can’t really imagine anything changing. Everything seems still and fixed and it makes me feel that I’m not frightened of anything.”
I said, “Except for the times I go down into the cellar I feel like I’m asleep. Whole weeks go by without me noticing, and if you asked me what happened three days ago I wouldn’t be able to tell you.”
We talked about the demolition at the end of our street and what it would be like if they knocked down our house.
“Someone would come poking around,” I said, “and all they would find would be a few broken bricks in the long grass.” Julie closed her eyes and crossed her leg over my thigh. Part of my arm was against her breast and beneath it I could feel the thud of her heart.
“It wouldn’t matter,” she murmured, “would it?” She began to edge farther up the bed till her large pale breasts were level with my face. I touched a nipple with the end of my finger. It was hard and wrinkled like a peach stone. Julie took it between her fingers and kneaded it. Then she pushed it toward my lips.
“Go on,” she whispered. I felt weightless, tumbling through space with no sense of up or down. As I closed my lips around Julie’s nipple a soft shudder ran through her body and a voice from across the room said mournfully, “Now I’ve seen it all.”
Immediately I tried to pull away. But Julie still had her arms around my neck and she tightened her hold. Her body screened me from Derek. Supporting herself on one elbow, she twisted round to look at him.
“Have you?” she said mildly. “Oh dear.” But her heart, inches from my face, was pounding. Derek spoke again and sounded much closer.
“How long has this been going on?” I was glad I could not see him.
“Ages,” Julie said, “ages and ages.”
Derek made a little gasping sound of surprise or anger. I imagined him standing still and upright with his hands in his pockets. This time his voice was thick and uneven.
“All those times… you never even let me come near you.” He cleared his throat noisily and there was a short silence. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I felt Julie shrug. Then she said, “Actually, it’s none of your business.”
“If you’d have told me,” Derek said, “I would have cleared off, left you to it.”
“Typical!” Julie said. “That’s typical.” Now Derek was angry. His voice retreated across the room.
“It’s sick,” he said loudly, “he’s your brother.”
“Talk quietly, Derek,” Julie said firmly, “or you’ll wake Tom up.”
“Sick!” Derek repeated, and the bedroom door slammed shut.
Julie sprang off the bed, locked the door and leaned against it. We listened for Derek’s car starting but apart from Tom’s breathing everything was very quiet. Julie was smiling at me. She went to the window and parted the curtains a little way. Derek had been in the room such a short time that now it seemed as though we had imagined him.
“Probably downstairs,” Julie said as she settled herself beside me again, “probably moaning at Sue.”
We were quiet for a minute or two, waiting for the echoes of Derek’s voice to die away. Then Julie laid her palm on my belly. “Look how white you are,” she said, “against my hand.”
I took her hand and measured it against mine. It was exactly the same size. We sat up and compared the lines on our palms, and these were entirely different. We began a long investigation of each other’s bodies. Lying on our backs side by side we compared our feet. Her toes were longer than mine and more slender. We measured our arms, legs, necks and tongues, but none of these looked so alike as our belly buttons, the same fine slit in the whorl which was squashed to one side, the same pattern of
creases in the hollow. It went on until I had my fingers in Julie’s mouth counting her teeth and we began to laugh at what we were doing.
I rolled onto my back and Julie, still laughing, sat astride me, took hold of my penis and pulled it into her. It was done very quickly and we were suddenly quiet and unable to look at each other. Julie held her breath. There was something soft in my way and as I grew larger inside her it parted and I was deep inside. She gave out a little sigh and knelt forward and kissed me lightly on the lips. She lifted herself slightly and sank down. A cool thrill unfurled from my belly and I sighed too. Finally we looked at each other. Julie smiled and said, “It’s easy.” I sat up a little way and pressed my face into her breasts. She took a nipple between her fingers again and found my mouth. As I sucked and that same shudder ran through my sister’s body, I heard and felt a deep, regular pulse, a great, dull, slow thudding which seemed to rise through the house and shake it. I fell back and Julie crouched forward. We moved slowly in time to the sound till it seemed to be moving us, pushing us along. At one point I glanced sideways and saw Tom’s face through the bars of the cot. I thought he was watching us but when I looked again his eyes were closed. I closed mine. A little later Julie decided that it was time to turn over. It was not an easy thing to do. My leg became trapped under hers. The bedcovers were in our way. We tried to roll one way and almost fell off the bed and we had to roll back. I pinned Julie’s hair against the pillow with my elbow and she said “ouch!” very loudly. We began to giggle and forgot what we were about. Soon we found ourselves lying side by side listening to the great rhythmic thuds that now proceeded a little slower than before.
