A Bit of Earth

by Rebecca Smith

  ‘Really, did you really?’

  ‘Yes. We often saw each other in the library, where she worked.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Felix.

  Judy wished that she had something a bit more precise or detailed or meaningful to add.

  ‘She loved you very, very much,’ she said.

  ‘I have to go now,’ said Felix, and he ran towards one of the greenhouses where a silhouette that must have been his father was sitting very still.

  When she got home and hung up her mac she guessed one of the reasons for Felix talking to her. Her favourite brooch, a turquoise enamel cat face, was pinned to the lapel. It must have been that, that and seeing her feed the birds; or perhaps it was just boredom or loneliness on his part, and a normal childish desire to impress and to share his important discovery of the newts. She hoped that she would see him again, and soon.

  The next day, in fact, she went to the garden hoping to see him, but Felix wasn’t there, or at least visible. She thought it was quite likely that he was hiding somewhere, amusing himself by spying on her. What a pity that she wasn’t doing anything more interesting than marking the essays that she hadn’t got through the day before. Max’s essay seemed better on paper than when he’d read it out loud. Perhaps it was just his manner. He could do with some hints on presentation and delivery before he shuffled into the real world. She gave it 62 per cent. High marks indeed from her. She put it to the bottom of the pile and as she looked up, taking a big breath before the next one, there was Max himself off in the distance, standing on one of the little plank and chicken-wire bridges, looking at the stream. She could see that he was eating something, he must have come here for a tea-time snack, but she couldn’t make out what, something in a packet. From where she was sitting it looked as though his messy brown hair was a cap of autumn leaves. It cheered her to see him in the garden. He was probably just killing time, but even so. She briefly considered making the 62 per cent into 63 per cent or even 64, but thought better of it.

  Max. What had been in his parents’ minds when they’d named him? Judy figured that young people called Max had probably not been christened. Hard to imagine the vicar saying, ‘Max, I sign you with the sign of the cross …’ and so on, but one never knew.

  He was Max (not Maxim or Maximilian). A Max should be rakish and debonair. A Max should be in a tux and carry a neat little revolver. A Max should be somebody slick and mean and rich. Or a matinee idol, or Maxim de Winter. But here was this Max, Max Cooper. If Judy had brought her binoculars with her, or if she’d been hiding in the tree with Felix, she would have been able to see that he was eating a Mexican wrap. Max liked Tex-Mex food. He was a Pepsi Max sort of a Max. A portion of fries please. Regular, Large or Super-Max?

  At school they had sometimes called him ‘Potato Man’; affectionately of course. He wasn’t bullied, more tolerated, and sometimes accommodated. Max Cooper, born and bred in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight, flat-footed and heavy-legged. At least at university PE was no longer compulsory, but it was bad luck for Max that being fit was now the thing.

  Was he fit? He was not.

  Although he had friends, he felt as though he would never be the hero who got the girl, rather the one dialling for pizza for everyone at 11.25 p.m. He would be the geek in the movie with a panino poised a hand’s breadth away from his mouth when something amazing appeared on the screen, a well-intentioned but expendable nerd.

  ‘He’s gonna get it!’ the audience would think when the super-volcano blew its top or the aliens landed.

  But maybe things can be changed, maybe destinies can be escaped. He didn’t want to end up back in Shanklin. Max was headed, and nobody really knew this yet, for Newfoundland, or perhaps, you see he hadn’t made his mind up, for somewhere just north of Seattle. Somewhere where nobody made jokes about Mini Coopers and Max Coopers.

  ‘You are still young.’

  Thirty years on her sisters were still telling her that, just as they had done when what they saw as ‘a decent interval’ had elapsed after Eduardo’s disappearance and the loss of the baby.

  ‘You are still young.’

  She had wondered when people would stop saying that to her. Now she realised that nobody had said it to her for a very long time. It had turned into ‘but you aren’t old’, which meant, of course, that they thought she was. She was way past childbearing age now, but she had her nephews and nieces. She knew that at some point, a long time ago, her sisters must have been saying that it would soon be too late for her. She could have put it crudely, and told them that she’d had her fair share of offers. The university was teeming with unattached and recently detached men, as well as many who pretended that they were; but now Judy had succeeded in erecting such a barrier of aloofness and impenetrable tranquillity around herself that she was quite safe.

  The 1970s had not surprisingly been the worst, full of threats. The 1980s had been pretty bad at times. There was still the twice-yearly horror of the departmental parties, but these were now much more sober affairs.

  At one, probably Christmas 1976, a colleague from the History department, Martyn Swatridge, had tried to kiss her. He had either been an early pioneer of designer stubble, or perhaps just a bit of a slob. One minute she had been talking to him, standing closer than she would ever have chosen, the music being so loud. They had been discussing Hardy’s poetry. Then suddenly he had lunged at her and clamped his bristly maw onto hers. It had felt like a giant beech nut, and before she could push him away, his tongue had started making horrible little lizard darts at her. She had run to wash her face and rinse out her mouth. He had stood outside the bathroom door for some time saying, ‘Aw, Judy, Judy’ in a way that she supposed was meant to be appealing. It seemed that he had mistaken her disgust for reserve or inexperience. There had followed several months of what nowadays would be viewed as harassment or even stalking. This only ceased when his passions were transferred to and, to Judy’s great relief, returned by a Medieval History post-grad. Eventually he had married this unfortunate young woman, finding her, at least at first, to be infinitely malleable and bullyable.

  The thing that upset Judy most about the whole business was that she loved Hardy’s poetry. Now whenever she read any of it she had to concentrate very hard not to think of this incident. When she trod beech mast underfoot, or cracked open a nut and found a tiny insect inside, she still thought of him. She found that pistachios were the most likely to contain some other life form, some poor little white worm, meant to be born in Persia, waking up in England. She suspected that she got more than her fair share of these.

  Now at parties she mostly talked to the departmental secretaries and made it her business to look after anybody new. Good old Judy. But she left early. Men kept their distance. She was too tough a nut to crack now, and perhaps too old.

  Judy found that whenever she was out, she would soon start longing to be home again. She had been in her little house for so long, renting it at first, and now she owned it. If Eduardo ever came back he would find her sleeping in the same room. Then the walls had been purple and scarlet. Now they were white, the only room in the house where colour did not reign. There was such comfort to be had in staying in one place, shutting your own front door, following the seasons in your own little garden, growing the same and some new varieties in your own little greenhouse year after year, watching your lilac tree grow, worrying that each storm might deal its fragile boughs a fatal blow. Strange that some woods were so much softer than others.

  That morning she had been woken by a strange new bird noise, you couldn’t have called it a song. She had been quite unable to identify it. It had sounded just like a parrot, or even several parrots, but small ones, probably parakeets. She had once seen them flying wild in Richmond Park. Now perhaps they had reached this neck of the woods. Should one be pleased? It would be hard not to be. She could imagine the local paper’s reaction – foreign interlopers … economic migrants, asylum seekers … scrounging off British bird tables – and wha
t would her garden birds think? She had wood pigeons on twenty-four-hour patrol, a pair of jays, goldfinches, and all the other usual garden visitors. There was no crisis in the house sparrow population in her garden. She supposed that the pecking order would have to be revised. And the languages of birds … would South American-born parakeets twitter in a different tongue to their London-born relatives? She often wished that she had studied Zoology rather than History of Art, or some environmental science that involved field trips to the seaside and knowing the names of different types of marine algae and rare birds. What larks, eh? She contented herself with organising the School of Humanities version of a field trip, their annual jaunt to the Jane Austen Society’s AGM and summer picnic. She was pleased that these events were not among those that attracted Professor Martyn Swatridge. He was now much too busy with the higher business of the university.

  Chapter 15

  Sometimes Felix longed to have somebody to talk to; instead he would just draw in a Black n’ Red book, or think about things and whisper into Marmalade’s fur.

  Today I had to run really fast to the garden. Sometimes if I am too slow there are people behind me and they might see where I go. Once Bradley and Harrison in Year 5 came after me. Today it was Thomas Keane as well, so that was worse. They were laughing and throwing fun snaps so I ran and ran. Harrison’s mum saw them and they stopped. I hid behind a car and I heard her say that it was Sweeties Day. They all have Sweeties Day on Fridays. I don’t care about that. At least it made them stop.

  If I think that anyone is watching I just lurk around until they give up, or sometimes I can disappear when they aren’t looking. It’s amazing how stupid people are. They don’t see something that is really obvious to another person, such as an important path or gate that leads somewhere very important.

  If I was bigger I would be better at fighting. Even then I don’t think I’d like fighting much, even if I could beat other people. At least I’m not too bad at running. And I’m very good at hiding and disappearing. I bet I’m the best at climbing in the whole school. I can climb really tall trees where the branches are in really tricky places. Most people would find my trees impossible. I’ll probably be an actual climber when I’m a man, and climb mountains as well as climbing walls. There may be a new Olympic sport of Difficult Tree Climbing.

  Sometimes I can be in the garden and spy on people. They sit under my tree and say and do things and never even know I am there. I used to spy on Judy quite a lot, but now we are friends and she has made friends with Dad too. She never did anything interesting, just read, ate sandwiches and apples, and fed the birds. She would bring work as well, the sort of stuff Dad has to do. I don’t bother spying on Dad. He never does anything interesting. I like spying on students best of all. Sometimes I think of putting up signs saying ‘Interesting Place To Do Interesting Things This Way!’ as not many bother coming. But really I like it best when it is quiet …

  Guy dreaded questions about how and why Susannah had died, so he hardly ever mentioned her to Felix. Even so, he hoped that Felix still had some recollections of her. Felix could remember her a little, and he had spent so long secretly gazing at the picture he’d stuck in his book and the ones in the albums that he thought he could remember much more than would have been possible. Felix thought that he could now remember being a toddler in a back carrier on a holiday somewhere, sitting on a wall in Portmeirion eating a very small vanilla ice cream, and being startled by those peacocks (although in the next photos, he had laughed at them and found a feather to keep), that he could remember riding on his dad’s shoulders on a walk back up a long sandy path from the beach. He looked and looked. Here was one of Uncle Jon with a funny hat on. And here was one of Grandpa eating a big sandwich. Something had made the bread go yellow, and he had the yellow stuff on his grey beard. It didn’t look very nice. Felix wished that there were more photos of Mummy.

  The photos stopped suddenly when he was about four. Sometimes he had to close the album quickly and chew on his cuff to stop himself from crying. But sometimes, later, staring and staring out of the window, or just when he fell asleep or woke up, or suddenly for no reason at all except maybe magic, he got a picture that wasn’t a photo.

  He is sitting on Mummy and Daddy’s bed. She is getting dressed. She is cross with her clothes, but not with him.

  ‘I hate everything I have,’ she says, and the piles of clothes on the bed get higher and higher, until he is surrounded. He is peeking out, at the top of a castle looking over the battlements.

  ‘I don’t know why I have all these colours,’ she says. Most things are navy blue and black and navy green, the colour of the uniform they have bought him for school. He thinks that colour is nice.

  ‘Why do I have all of this dark stuff?’ she says. ‘I hate dark stuff, and heavy things, and itchy things and tights.’ Some of it is pale brown. She calls it tan. She throws a pale brown cardigan, that isn’t dark or heavy or itchy, so that it lands on his head. He kicks some of the piles onto the floor and they laugh and she tickles him.

  ‘What I want is pink,’ she says. ‘I need pink.’ Then she says it is time to get ready. She puts on her jeans and a white T-shirt and the pale brown cardigan and they go to nursery where it is colours again. If you wear something red, he thinks, looking down at his shorts, and something white like his T-shirt, you are sort of pink.

  After snack and milk, which is in red beakers with two handles but no lid, he does a painting. It is all pink and red.

  ‘Do you like pink, Felix?’ one of the ladies asks. He just looks at the picture and his brush. The ladies all wear green sweatshirts. Some are thin and some are fat. They are all kind except for Diane who won’t let you make spare bikes into trailers, even if nobody else wants to ride on them.

  ‘My mummy likes pink,’ he says at last.

  Chapter 16

  Judy had taken Jemima to see Tosca, and then to Pizza Express. Jemima stayed the night. Judy loved it when she did. It was so often unexpected, but Judy found that it never upset her equilibrium the way that the presence of almost any other unexpected guest might have. Judy still loved the phrase ‘unexpected guest’, as used by magazines suggesting suppers or lunches or presents for them. She always had a bed ready for Jemima. The school of art where she was studying was only twenty or so miles away. Judy hoped that Jemima saw her house as somewhere to bolt to, to have some home comforts without any intrusion. She really was a bit jealous of Peggy, Jemima’s mother. Imagine having Jemima all the time, for eighteen years, and even now for almost all of the long vacations. The things that Jemima did that drove Peggy mad – sleeping beyond noon, using the top of her chest of drawers as a palette and getting blobs of oil paint on the carpet, wearing grungy clothes, buying everybody she knew the same thing for Christmas; one year it had been jars of Nutella, and another year hyacinths; they had all been lined up on the table in the hall ready to go, not even with individual gift tags (that would only complicate things), just ‘Happy Christmas from Jemima’ – these things Judy just found endearing.

  Jemima slept with such abandon, like a little child. She seemed to lack an internal alarm clock and needed strings of phone calls to rouse her if she ever had to be up for an exam or a train.

  When Jemima stayed the night, Judy would tiptoe in with a cup of black tea (this niece was a vegan) at 8.30, knowing that it might still be there, undrunk, at midday. Judy loved the bizarre things that Jemima slept in; ancient long johns, with impossibly pretty and tiny little camisoles that would have given Judy very chilly shoulders. It seemed that young women were now inured to the cold – they wore these minute vests, day or night, whatever the season. Phoebe did it, almost all of Judy’s female students did it, including many whom it did not suit. This morning Judy wished that Jemima had been awake to witness her aunt’s heroics. There had been six daddy-long-legs in the bathroom. Judy had armed herself with a tray, six large glasses and six postcards and pieces of junk mail. She had caught them all, and carried them
downstairs and out into the garden trapped inside the upturned glasses on the tray. Judy Lovage, Daddy-Long-Legs Liberator, looking like an elderly cocktail waitress in a bar for bats. It amused her, even though she was so used to this sort of thing. If you live alone you have no choice but to put out your own spiders and deal with anything that your cat brings in.

  Chapter 17

  ‘Hey! Felix! Catch!’ Erica swung a sturdy branch of Montezuma pine and neatly batted a cone towards him. But Felix didn’t catch. His mouth seemed to slowly slip open, but his arms stayed hanging at his sides. He turned as rigid as a petrol pump. Here, thought Erica, is a child who doesn’t play catch.

  ‘Want to try again?’ She batted another cone, more gently. This time Felix made an attempt to get it, and he almost did.

  ‘I’m not very good at this,’ Felix told her. ‘Mrs Cowplain says I always seem to be looking the wrong way.’

  ‘I expect you’re just looking at something more interesting than her. I bet you could be really good if you wanted. You’re really good at outdoor things, aren’t you?’

  ‘Only climbing and discovering.’ He might have added ‘and silently watching’.

  ‘Well, those are the most important things.’

  Felix looked away from her, then down at the ground, which in this corner of the meadow was studded with pine cones. Many had been gnawed to the core by squirrels, the copper-coloured damp interiors exposed, all kernels gone. Felix thought that they did look tasty. It might be like eating a cereal bar, or maybe some dried pineapple. They had done food tasting at school and had rings of dried pineapple. It was the chewiest thing in the world, but if you ate too much of it, and you hadn’t had much breakfast, it would give you stomach ache.