by Tom McCarthy
There’s a pause, then Felicity replies: “Talesbury, Mr. Carrefax.” She pronounces the T and b of “Talesbury” with utter precision, but its vowels drag and stretch out, as though snagged on the consonants. The f and x of “Carrefax” hiss like a punctured football.
“Splendid! Now ask Timothy how many brothers he has.”
Felicity turns to the freckled boy and says, slowly and diligently:
“Timothy: how many brothers have you?”
Timothy eventually responds: “I have two brothers.” His voice is slightly deeper than hers; his final s resembles more a buzz than a hiss. His hands twitch slightly by his sides as he intones the words, then cling to the fabric of his shorts, as though tethering themselves down.
“Splendid! And now, Felicity and Timothy both: tell me, what poem have you been committing to heart of late?”
The children reply together but slightly off-kilter: “ ‘The Shepheardes Calender.’ ”
“Recite the first few stanzas for our friends here,” Carrefax instructs them. The children turn away from one another; Carrefax cues Felicity with a nod and she declaims:
Cuddie, for shame hold up thy heavy head,
And let us cast with what delight to chase,
And weary this long lingering Phoebus race.
Whilhom thou wont the shepherd’s lads to lead,
In rhymes, in riddles, and in bidding base…
She speaks slowly and deliberately; the words snag and stretch and drag and hiss again. Prospective parents lean forward in their undersize chairs, straining to catch the meaning of her phrases. These give the strange effect of coming from some other speaker lurking out of view-off to the podium’s side, or under it. A couple of prospective parents glance around the room, disoriented. When Felicity’s finished, Carrefax nods at Timothy and he begins:
Piers, I have pipéd erst so long with pain,
That all mine Oten reeds be rent and wore:
And my poor Muse hath spent her sparéd store,
Yet little good hath got, and much less gain.
Such pleasance makes the Grasshopper so poor,
And lie so laid, when Winter doth her strain…
His words, like Felicity’s, seem to issue not from him but rather to divert through him-as though his mouth, once it formed and held the correct shape for long enough, received a sound spirited in from another spot, some other area, eerie, ear.
ii
In a room to the side of this one, Schoolroom Two, Simeon’s son Serge spends what he has been told in passing, although only by the maid, is his second-and-a-half birthday playing with wooden blocks. He sits on a floor which, unlike the bare wooden floor of Schoolroom One, is muffled by a rug. Morning sunshine falls in a long beam through the bow-window, vaults the cosy recess seat that runs along the inside of the window’s curve and comfortably lands among the rug’s curling hairs; rising from these, it hovers in jars and bottles in which labelled toys-horses, cars, clowns and acrobats-are stashed. More labels, unattached to objects, spill from a low table to spread a debris of words across the floor.
The wooden blocks have geometric figures painted on them, like numbers on dice: squares, triangles, circles and other, more complex forms. On a single side of each block (the side that, were they dice, would bear the number six), several of these figures have been combined so as to form a picture-of a cyclist, a house, a hippopotamus or a magician pulling a rabbit from his hat, for instance. Serge has stacked the magician above the cyclist and, above that, a butcher who clutches a knife in one hand and a string of sausages in the other, holding them up for inspection much as the magician does his rabbit. The figures all appear in profile, flat; the landscape across which the cyclist rides, made up of rectangles and segments, is as shallow as the round wheels above which his trapezoid body sits-as though, even within the painted world of the block’s surface, he were no more than a cardboard cut-out posed in front of a piece of stage-scenery. Serge ponders the combination for a while, then, holding cyclist and magician in place, removes the butcher and replaces him with the large, round hippopotamus, who wallows, again in profile, in an elliptic pool of mud. Serge holds this new vertical line-up together while he contemplates it; then, deciding it’s satisfactory, he removes his hands from the stack. As soon as he does, it starts to wobble, the combined weight of hippo, mud, rabbit and magician proving too much for the beleaguered cyclist, who’s further let down by the soft, uneven surface underneath his wheels. As the blocks tumble, rhombi, trapezia and deltoids flash and disappear in a frantic progression, spreading out across the rug.
Serge looks up at the window, then at a whiteboard on whose surface more geometry is displayed: rows of round shapes with lines inside them have been drawn on it. The shapes modulate as they repeat, their curves narrowing or widening, their lines arcing and flexing as they process across the glass. Looking down again, Serge turns his attention to a toy soldier who’s been resting until now against his thigh. Picking the soldier up, he holds him to his face. The soldier’s eyes are neutral, gazing off into the middle distance; his mouth is set in a calm, still expression that contains the tiniest hint of a smile. Serge lays the soldier front-up on the rug, smoothing its hairs aside to form an enclave for the back to nestle in. The thick fibres thread and wrap around the soldier’s sides. Serge reaches for one of the wooden blocks and, lifting it up above the soldier, slams it down hard onto his face. The soldier’s legs and feet jolt upwards as the comparatively huge slab hits him. Serge draws the block back, then slams it down onto the soldier’s face again; then again, several times. When he’s done smashing him he holds the soldier up to inspect the damage. His eyes are unaffected, still vague and distant, but his mouth has been deformed, its plaster dented and chipped away. Serge scrapes at the ground-down surface with his thumbnail, lifting off more flakes of plaster. Then, to no one but himself since he’s alone, he says:
“Bodner.”
He sets the soldier down gently on the rug, propping him up in a sitting position against the wooden block that’s just mutilated him. Serge is reaching out towards another block when his attention is distracted by the hurried entrance of the family cat and, close on its tail, his older sister Sophie. Sophie is half running, half skipping, with clenched hands held out in front of her. Placing herself between the cat and the door, she thrusts her hands towards the cat and sings:
“Spitalfield! Oh, Spitalfield!”
The cat retreats beneath the recess seat. Sophie stoops low and creeps towards it, opening her palms to reveal four or five small white larval balls nestled warmly in them.
“Just try one, Spitalfield,” she purrs, holding the balls temptingly up to the cat’s face. The cat turns its head away, then, ducking beneath her hands, breaks cover and darts out of the room. Sophie lets out a sigh and, setting the larvae on the recess seat’s cushion, turns her attention to Serge. Scooping three or four of the wooden blocks up from the carpet, she starts laying them out in front of him. Then, kneeling behind them and pulling the front of her skirt forwards so that it covers the figures on their surface, she says: “If you can remember which one is which I’ll give you my pocket money. If not, forfeit.”
But Serge doesn’t want to play her game. He reaches between her legs, pushing through the pleated fabric. She grabs his wrist and pulls it out again. “Forfeit!” she cackles. “Take your trousers down.”
“No!” Serge snaps. But she’s stronger than him. She wraps her arm around him, pulls him to his feet and, still kneeling beside him, yanks his trousers down his legs. He wriggles as she pulls the pants beneath these down as well.
“Aha!” she shouts in triumph. “Now to telegraph the Admiralty.” Holding him in place, she begins tapping his little penis with her index finger. “ ‘Dear Sir: Please send reinforcements,’ tap-tap-tap. ‘Enemy quite outnumber us,’ tap-tap. ‘Are holding out but fear total submission if not soon relieved,’ tap-tip tap-tip.”
“Stop it!” Serge shouts.
“W
hy? I’ve seen Miss Hubbard do it. She did it with the man from Lydium. ‘Dear Man from Lydium,’ tap-tap, ‘please send more charcoal and wipers for our school class,’ tip-tip-tip. ‘Weather here fine but rain is forecast for tomorrow.’ Tippety-tap. See? You’re laughing.”
“No I’m not!” Serge shouts, straining to get away. Eventually he manages to break loose. Sophie half-heartedly grabs after him, but he pushes her hands away. Moving a safe distance from her, he pulls his pants and trousers up, then gathers the wooden blocks up in his cradled arm and shuffles through the door through which the cat’s just made its own escape.
Sophie watches him go, then shrugs, sits back and tilts her head to one side as she looks up at the whiteboard. As she runs her eyes along the rows of round, lined shapes, her mouth forms positions, holding each in place for several seconds before morphing to strike up the next one: her jaw lowering and lifting, cheeks tautening then slackening, fattening, rising to form pregnant mounds while her lips stretch back in terror or jut forwards to pucker into silent kisses.
iii
Out in the warm March sunlight, Serge totters with his blocks towards a wooden trolley. It’s a small trolley with a large handlebar at one end: it’s been his for a year now, ever since he started walking. He stoops over it and, loosening the cradle of his left arm, lets the blocks fall into it. Grabbing the handle with both hands, he starts pushing the trolley along the gravel footpath. To his right, women are moving among mulberry trees, climbing and descending ladders, carrying baskets to and from the spinning houses. One of them stops and waves at him but he ignores her, pushing on. To his left is the wall between the Mulberry Orchard and the Maze Garden; coming to the doorway in this, he steers his trolley through and pushes it into the corridor formed by the paving laid into the lawn. When the corridor forks, cutting at right angles in opposite directions, he chooses a branch and follows it until, after performing several more right-angled turns and forking twice more, it comes to a dead end. He doubles back to the last fork, advances down another branch and follows it until it, too, runs out-at which point he doubles two forks back and takes a new branch. There’s no need to stick to the paved section-the maze is wall-less, two-dimensional as the figures on the blocks, and the grass is short and wouldn’t slow his trolley down-but he continues working his way along the abruptly turning corridors, held by their pattern, until they deliver him back out, through the same doorway, to the footpath once more.
The same woman waves at him; again he ignores her and, pushing his trolley past the house’s main entrance, turns into the Low Lawn, crosses it and passes through the hedge into the Lime Garden. Leaving his trolley at the edge of this, he walks to its centre and pauses there. The lime trees are flowering; little white and yellow petals teeter on the ends of branches. The bees are active: Serge can see a blur of movement around the openings to their hives at the garden’s far end. He tilts his head to one side, then the other; then he slowly rotates his whole body above the spot on which he’s standing. The bees’ hum first grows and then recedes, changing pitch as his ears turn through the air. As trees, grass and hedge run together, the bees seem to relocate, and hum from a new spot within his head, their pitch and volume being modulated from inside him now, not outside. He rotates several more times, relishing the acoustic effect, its repetition.
Eventually he returns to his trolley, swings it round and pushes it back across the Low Lawn, steering it off the path after he rounds the house’s edge. A swathe has been mown through the longer grass, leading up to and through a large metal gate set in tall stone walls. The gate is open. Serge follows the swathe between the gate’s obelisk-topped supporting columns and enters the Crypt Park.
It’s darker in here. Tall hedges wall him in; the obelisks cast shadows on the ground. Trees and bushes sprout up willy-nilly, closing off most lines of view. Serge pushes onwards, following the mown swathe until, beside an empty bench, it suddenly gives out. He continues, but from here on in the going’s harder: grass-strands twine themselves around the trolley’s wheels; the blocks slide and jump across its floor. Serge rests beside a tree stump and, looking up, catches sight of his mother. She’s sitting on another bench, leaning her back against the Crypt. On the bench beside her a teapot, a cup, a jar of honey and a little phial are laid out.
Serge pushes his trolley over to the bench, pulls to a halt in front of it and leans into his mother’s knees. These give a little but not much. He looks up at her face: it’s staring at some point beyond the trees and bushes. He climbs onto the bench beside her and tugs at her shoulders. She looks down at him and her eyes look like honey, warm and murky. She smiles through him, at the ground, or something underneath it. Serge dips his finger in her honey jar, pulls it out again and sticks it in his mouth, rolling and smearing it around the inside of his cheeks. The bench’s surface has a sticky patch on it between the jar and the cup. A wasp has landed in this and is drawing off the syrup with its needle-like mandible. Its legs have broken through the honey’s surface; they tread slightly, trying to free themselves, but they’re already immersed; its mandible, meanwhile, continues drawing. Serge watches it for a while, then takes the phial and presses it down across the insect’s body, using its rim to slice apart the bridge where thorax meets abdomen. The wasp’s legs continue their treading and its mandible its drawing even after they’re no longer joined. Its thorax throbs, then stiffens and is still. Serge takes his trolley’s handle up again and pushes on.
Light dapples his shoulders as he passes beneath budding conker trees. Eventually he arrives at the stream that hems in the Crypt Park on the side furthest from the house. Beyond the stream, he can see sheep grazing on Arcady Field, diminishing in size as the field rises into Telegraph Hill. Serge gathers up the blocks and, cradling them once more in his left arm, edges towards the stream. He crouches down close to it and sees the slope of Telegraph Hill and the bright sky above it reflected in the water. He leans forward and catches sight of the top of his own head, his eyes, his nose and mouth. Then he takes a block from his left arm and places it gently on the surface of the water. The block floats. He prods it with his finger and it sinks, then bobs back to the surface again. Its upper face has a flat, in-profile football player on it. He prods it off-centre so as to spin it in the water; the block sinks and bobs, tumbling; when it comes to rest, a lone triangle is uppermost. Serge floats a second block, then a third. As he prods them they drift further from the bank. He leans out after them, so far that he can see his whole torso reflected in the water, right down to his knees, with the blue sky revolving above it like a turning lid…
And then he’s in, tumbling and turning like the blocks as water rushes up his nose and burns his throat. His hands push muddy slime and he bobs up again, his face back in the air, his legs beneath him. He grabs at the blocks but these spin and sink away from his splashing hands. He tries to breathe in but the passageway is blocked: it makes a kind of elongated gasp that turns into a splutter, then a gulping as his head goes under again. Beneath the surface of the stream, he opens his eyes. The water is bright and murky at the same time, like honey. Snake-like fronds wave and dance in its lit-up darkness; particles of mud hang between these, stirred up into canopies of blossom. The water’s right inside him; it’s not nasty anymore, just cold. And he’s no longer sinking: if anything, he’s been lifted up, by strong arms coiled round him, hugging him…
Then he’s being pushed, right in his chest, and spurts of stream are shooting from his mouth into the air before cascading back onto the muddy grass. He’s lying on the bank, and Maureen’s kneeling above him, pumping him. He vomits water, gasps, coughs, vomits more and gasps again; then, once he can breathe properly, just lies there quietly, breathing. Between him and the sky hangs Maureen’s face; it stares straight at him, sobbing. He stares back, perplexed: her mouth and eyes look funny from this angle. They’re red and fat. The eyes close and she shrieks; then she grabs him in her arms and holds him to her breast so tightly he can hardly breathe a
gain. He slips out of her grasp, scrambles to his feet and wanders back towards his trolley-but she sweeps him up again before he reaches this and, trussing him up between her arm and waist, starts striding with him through the Crypt Park, back towards the gate.
“Incapable!” she sobs as they pass the Crypt. On the bench in front of it the teapot, cup and jar of honey have been left. “Incapable and arrogant! Can’t even bother to look after what they’re lucky enough to still have…”
She stops between the obelisk-topped columns of the Crypt Park ’s metal gate, sets him down on the grass and, holding him by the shoulders, kisses him on both cheeks. Serge squirms and tries to escape but she’s got him trapped.
“I’ll never let you from my sight again until you’re…” she begins, but her voice trails away. She kisses him once more, then sweeps him up into her arms again and strides decisively towards the house. Women look over at them from the Mulberry Orchard. Behind the women, shapes and pictures drift flat and unnoticed on the stream as it emerges from behind the Crypt Park ’s walls and oozes silently along its course.
