Burning Boy (Penguin Award Winning Classics), The

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Why did you read about it then?’

  ‘There was lots of words. It was lying there.’

  ‘And you remember the whole book, cover to cover?’

  He nodded with that butting of his head. ‘That’s easy.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Last year. When I came out of hospital.’

  ‘Do you look up words you don’t know in the dictionary?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And looking at ants is more or less the same? What do they do? Inside your head?’

  She’d frightened him and he would not answer.

  ‘Duncan, are there things you read and like? Things that you like more than other things?’

  ‘Yes.’ She barely heard him.

  ‘Read me one. Say it from the book. I won’t tell. Is that what frightens you, someone finding out what you can do?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Look at me, Duncan. You can trust me.’

  He liked the look of her well enough. She was old but her skin hadn’t wrinkled yet, and that was why his father wanted her. ‘Here comes La bloody Gioconda’ – which was a famous painting, Belinda said. Sneering showed Tom Round couldn’t have what he wanted. Good old Mrs Sangster, Duncan thought now and then.

  Her eyes were putting on a look he was supposed to trust, kind of soft and twinkly. He did not trust her eyes. They must get lots of practice looking like that with girls at school and she could probably change them when she wanted. He knew she could be tough because of what she’d written to his father. But he liked her mouth and was not sure its softness was a lie. It was like a girl’s mouth, pink and clean and not with bits of flaky skin and greasy bits of lipstick. It smiled in a way he did not think could be put on. A rush of feeling started in his chest, almost making him cry. (He could not cry with one eye because the tear ducts were taken out.)

  He turned his head away from her.

  ‘Came a bird from Lapland flying,

  From the north-east came an eagle,

  Not the largest of the eagles,

  Nor was he among the smallest,

  With one wing he swept the water,

  To the sky was swung the other;

  On the sea his tail he rested,

  On the cliffs his beak he rattled.’

  He enjoyed the brightness about those words, the little space around them, like a coloured coat.

  ‘Where did you find that?’ Mrs Sangster said.

  ‘In a book.’

  ‘And it’s something you like? Do you like birds?’

  ‘I like watching them.’

  ‘And not just to store them in your head?’

  It puzzled him that she was so pleased. People got angry or embarrassed around him, and tears came into some women’s eyes, which was OK, it really had nothing to do with him. Mrs Sangster, though, was pleased because of what he had done. He did not know why she should feel like that but supposed it was because of poetry. She asked him if liking things made them easy to learn. He hadn’t thought about it, but told her there wasn’t any difference he could see, the difference was they kept on coming back and had a kind of coloured space around them; and they hurt.

  ‘Hurt?’

  ‘Not too bad.’ He was alarmed. He pinched a bit of skin on his wrist. ‘About like that. It makes all the colours come out.’ She moved her head, very quick, and seemed to be sniffing, and he remembered dogs around a rat-hole and knew she was excited and wanted to get something out of him. But still her mouth smiled and he trusted her.

  ‘Walk with me a little way,’ she said.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘My house. It’s just through the cemetery. Would you like a drink? Or a biscuit?’

  He went at her side through the graves. The older ones were deep in the trees, with names on the headstones he could not read. He wanted to scrape them to find out but she kept on putting her hand on his back and giving him a little push along. He liked her long round fingers on the numb place where his scars began. He had, in his mind, a map of his back, made from feeling it not from seeing, and could draw it on paper if someone asked. He was pleased he had dead places on his skin, and an armpit that did not sweat, and an eye that could not cry. The parts of him that itched were getting smaller. Sometimes he squeezed them in his head and made them shrink. He turned them cold and stopped them altogether, but could not keep it up for long and was bad-tempered when he stopped.

  ‘That’s my great-grandmother’s grave,’ Mrs Sangster said. ‘She died when she was only twenty-two. Giving birth.’

  ‘What year?’

  ‘Eighteen-sixty something.’ She rubbed the headstone, making moss and lichen powder off. ‘Eighteen-sixty-nine.’

  ‘One hundred and seventeen years. That’s fourteen hundred and four months.’

  ‘Oh, so you do arithmetic too.’

  ‘I can work the days out if you like.’ Her amusement made him happy. ‘I don’t use paper for anything.’ He grinned. ‘Except …’

  Mrs Sangster twisted her mouth and gave a snort. ‘That’s understood. I’m pleased you make connections.’ He did not know what she meant. ‘Writing-paper and toilet-paper.’

  ‘It was a joke.’ He felt in danger. ‘I just fill things up. I put in dots. That’s nothing much.’

  They came out of the trees and looked down towards the tennis courts, where Stella and Belinda ran and hit. ‘That’s my sisters.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I wonder who’s winning.’

  ‘Stell will win. She just hits them soft and Belinda gets mad and starts bashing.’ He was pleased to have this to talk about. ‘Last time Stella won six-four, six-three. The time before it was six-four, six-love. Belinda hit one ball over the road into the school. She was trying to hit Stella but she missed.’

  Mrs Sangster laughed. ‘Do you play tennis?’

  ‘I’m no good at sport. I chucked my bat away at softball once and hit the umpire fair on the head.’ He looked at the girls playing softball on the bottom field. ‘That’s Hayley Birtles pitching. She was Wayne’s sister. Wayne was the one that got burned with me.’

  Mrs Sangster drew in her breath. She waited a while before she spoke. ‘Do you mind talking about that?’

  ‘I don’t mind. No one ever asks me. Belinda used to ask me but she stopped. I think they think I’ll get upset or something.’

  ‘Do you miss Wayne?’

  ‘He was never one of my best friends. He was bloody silly lighting that cigarette.’

  ‘And the petrol just exploded?’

  ‘Yeah. How dumb can you get?’

  ‘Do you remember much after it happened? Straight after?’

  ‘Not much. Mandy chucked me in the pool. Mum lost all her new rugs trying to put Wayne out.’

  A bump moved in her throat where the skin was loose. It surprised him that a headmistress should be like anyone else, with tubes and spit, and a flake of dry snot in her nose, moving up and down as she breathed. He wondered if he should tell her about it. He guessed the question she was getting ready to ask.

  ‘Did it hurt very much?’

  ‘Didn’t hurt at all. It only hurt in hospital.’

  ‘They gave you things for that, of course.’

  ‘Still hurt. These grafts hurt.’ He touched his right hand with his left.

  ‘Can you use that hand all right?’

  ‘I can pick things up. They reckon I’m lucky.’

  ‘And your eye?’

  ‘I can see things.’ He grinned, enjoying her interest. ‘Can’t cry though. Lucky I’m not a girl.’

  Mrs Sangster seemed to feel a tickling in her nose. She took out her handkerchief and blew.

  ‘Some girls don’t cry a lot. And some boys do. You can do it without tears, you know.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He did not know what she meant and was disappointed she didn’t ask more questions about him. They went through an iron gate with spearheads on top and crossed a bit of park thick with clover and went through a back
gate into her garden. New plants were growing in straight rows – lettuce were the only ones he knew – and she stopped to pull a weed out. One of her knees went click and she said, ’Ouch!

  ‘My apology for a garden,’ she said, straightening up. ‘I don’t get enough time for it. Do you grow things?’

  ‘Me? No.’

  ‘Josie does, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Herbs and stuff.’

  ‘And Tom? Your father?’

  ‘He only grows green peppers. For the salad. He’s trying to grow bananas too, in a kind of sun-trap, but they only grow about five centimetres long. He hit one bunch with a hammer once.’

  Mrs Sangster laughed. ‘I think Tom would like to speak the word. Come and have a drink. You must be thirsty.’

  They crossed a lawn where clothes were drying on a line. She felt a pair of knickers with her hand, then on her cheek. They had lace on the edge and see-through cloth. His mother had some pairs the same and he knew old women wore sexy things, though he wondered what for. ‘They’re pants for taking off,’ Belinda said. Who would want to take them off women as old as that? (except his father). When she picked up a cat on the back porch and rubbed her face on it the way its fur sloped, that was more the sort of thing she should do. It was a skinny cat with blue eyes and a ratty tail and it stretched its legs and put out its claws, which got caught in her dress. ‘Little devil,’ she said, dropping it by her feet. ‘Do you have a cat?’

  ‘Mum’s got one. It dribbles on her pillow. It’s pretty old.’

  ‘And Belinda’s got a dog, hasn’t she? What sort is that?’

  ‘A kind of dachshund corgi cross. Its stomach rubs on the ground when it walks. She reckons she’s going to take it to the vet and get it put down.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s just saying that.’

  ‘You don’t know Bel. She says’– he put on her voice – ‘ “You can’t argue with necessity.” ’

  Mrs Sangster laughed. ‘Poor dog.’

  ‘It has to get its anal glands squeezed all the time.’

  ‘Well, one doesn’t keep pets unless one can cope with their little ways. Come in, Duncan. Go in there, in the sitting room. What would you like to drink?’

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Tea. Coffee. Fruit juice. Ginger ale.’

  ‘I’ll have ginger ale.’

  He felt he was on a picnic.

  Norma poured a glass of ginger ale and, to be companionable, a glass of apple juice topped up with soda. She found it interesting that Duncan, after his suspicious start, had relaxed so much. Josie complained that he gave only one word answers or a shrug, and asked no questions, made no observations. (He was, she said, like a robot or an android – then blushed and shivered, remembering, Norma guessed, that plastic-seeming skin that stretched over so much of him.) But here he was chattering and grinning and making jokes. There was more to it than just her skill in drawing young people out. He seemed to recognize that he was safe – and Norma understood she had taken on a job. Really she had meant just to be kind but kindness had a way of trapping one. She was pleased he liked her though – and found her amusing. He had his share of masculine contempt.

  Ginger ale slopped on to her fingers. Why did one top things up for males, as though they had a right to extra shares? She tipped a half inch off his glass, wiped her hand on the sink-cloth, and went into the sitting room, where he was standing, hands on hips, looking about.

  ‘Nice room.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Lots of books.’

  ‘If you see any that you’d like to borrow …’

  ‘Got plenty at home.’

  ‘Do you read novels?’

  ‘Read anything. Bel’s the only one who’s got any stories. Sweet Valley High.’ He grinned – and again she felt a lurch of fear and pain at the surgical work round his mouth. ‘ “Roger Barrett has always had a hopeless crush on glamorous, wealthy Lila Fowler. The only attention Lila ever pays him, though, is to make fun of him in front of her friends. But why shouldn’t she, he thinks. After all, he’s clumsy and shy and works secretly as a janitor after school.” ’

  ‘I’m surprised at Belinda.’

  ‘ “Elizabeth Wakefield is stunned when Nicholas Morrow asks her for a date. A newcomer to Sweet Valley, Nicholas is fabulously wealthy and extremely handsome –” ’

  ‘Yes, I get the picture. You read those to fill your head up, do you?’

  ‘Good as anything else. “Has Elizabeth found a new love?” “Can Roger melt Lila’s icy heart?” ’

  ‘I’m glad it amuses you.’

  ‘Stell reckons Belinda’s rotting her brain.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Me? It’s words, that’s all. Hey, you’ve got some incense. Mum uses this stuff.’

  ‘Do you like the smell?’ She gave up waiting for him to take his drink and put it on the coffee-table. ‘We can have some if you like.’

  ‘Aladdin’s Dream. Mum’s got Perfumed Garden. And Bam Bam Bhole. That’s from India.’

  Chatter, she thought, he’s like a three-year-old just learned to speak. ‘Shall we have some Lemon-grass? That’s not too strong for morning.’

  ‘Sure. Mum likes Frankincense best. Because of the name. There’s Frankincense, Honeysuckle, Wistaria, Freesia, Jasmine …’

  ‘You really do remember things, don’t you?’ She put a stick of incense in the holder and picked up the matches. The rattle of the box made her throw a look at him. She tried to hurry taking out the match.

  ‘It was Mum’s lighter Wayne used. Can I light it?’ He came to her side and took the match. ‘Fire doesn’t scare me if that’s what you think.’ He lit the incense, watched the smoke rise, cut the plume in half with his finger. Sniffed deeply. ‘Good, eh?’

  ‘Do you remember smells the same as words?’

  ‘Yes. Musk is what I like. And Patchouli.’

  ‘Can you actually smell them, as you name them?’

  ‘Never tried.’ He closed his eyes a moment; opened them with a startled look. ‘Yeah, I can.’

  ‘Let’s see, then. Magnolia.’

  ‘I can get that.’

  ‘Carnation.’

  He blinked his eyes, nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Frangipani.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You really are a most remarkable boy. You actually smell them?’

  ‘Kind of.’ He withdrew. She guessed it was her word ‘remarkable’ that closed him up.

  ‘Have your drink, Duncan. Before it loses its fizz. Ah, lovely incense. It would be nice to call up smells.’

  ‘Onions,’ he said. ‘Fowl manure.’

  She laughed. ‘Duncan, I don’t want to pry. But can I ask some questions? You can stop me when you want.’

  ‘What sort of questions?’

  ‘Easy ones. I won’t tell anyone. That’s a promise.’

  He drank again, emptied half his glass. ‘Fire away.’ It was one of his father’s expressions and made her smile. The uncertainty under his assurance reminded her of the care she must take.

  ‘Well, you say when the accident happened it didn’t hurt.’

  ‘Didn’t. I didn’t feel a thing.’

  ‘But there was shock –’

  ‘Hypovolemic shock is what it’s called. I had that. And capillary leak. I had everything.’ He smiled at her. ‘I read a book Mum had at home. That’s how I know the words.’

  ‘Ah, so you do use what you find?’

  ‘Some of it. “When lay people first meet a person who is very disfigured, it is not uncommon for them to express the opinion that such people should not have been resuscitated.” ’

  Norma does not know how to take this. She thinks she has grasped Duncan, then he eludes her. She thinks him childish – regressed in some things almost to a state of infancy – then finds him middle-aged and wise; hears him chatter, then finds him remote. She’s certain of this and that going on in his head, but halted by the mystery of what goes on in some parallel or deeper o
r concentric place. She grasps him and is amused and sad; then cannot grasp and finds herself hollowed out with fright.

  But Norma is not a person who gives up. She asks him how he feels about the way people react to his appearance, and he replies it does not bother him. She knows it’s true. Asks him questions one would judge more safe – whether he intends going back to school? – and is surprised to find she has made him angry. Trying to find the reason, she goes on – with his ability to remember things there’s really nothing he shouldn’t be able to do scholastically. If school does not appeal to him, what about private lessons? It’s a dreadful pity to waste such a gift – (gift of the fire, she thinks, appalled at herself).

  They sit quiet a while, sipping their drinks. He says, ‘I don’t want to learn things. I’m not going back to school.’

  ‘Let’s leave that aside for a while.’ Asks him, with great care, what he remembers about the accident. The actual seconds after it, she means.

  There’s nothing he remembers. He didn’t see Wayne any more. He doesn’t remember standing up, or getting outside, or Mandy throwing him in the pool. But he’s evasive and she turns him back, placing a finger on his wrist. ‘Did nothing, nothing happen in your mind?’

  There was, he admits, a kind of flash. He watches her finger, which expands into a hand resting on his arm. He feels a firm softness, and a palm-shaped warmth and cold; cannot tell which comes from him and which from her.

  And then he was flying, he begins; you know on television when you’re kind of in a plane going close to the ground, and the ground is going back under you, and you go over hills and go up rivers and over plains, and everything’s zipping underneath, and it goes on forever, valleys and hills and mountain ranges …

  That’s why he likes the eagle, she thinks; and understands the landscape is his brain and he has seen the length and breadth of it; and now he tries to fill it up.

  ‘And what was there,’ she says, ‘at the end?’

  He hesitates, then shakes his head. ‘There wasn’t any end. I guess I kind of blacked out when Mandy threw me in the pool.’

  The length and breadth. All the places dark and unexplored, all the places locked up we can never use. Duncan has been there. She starts to take her hand from his arm, then puts it back and holds on to him.