The Pink Cage

by Derbhile Dromey

  “It’s a ghetto blaster. He got it for his birthday last week,” said Ora.

  “What does it do?”

  “It’s for music,” he said. “It’s got a radio and it plays tapes and stuff.”

  “Why did you bring a radio? We have radios here too, you know.”

  “Geoff, come and help me with this food,” Ora said.

  Matthew came in as they finished putting the parcels in the cupboards.

  “There you are,” he said, his voice reverberating around the kitchen. “Never heard you arrive. Apologies for that.”

  He strode over to the boy and pumped his hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, Geoffrey. I’m Dr Johnson. Not to be confused with the lexicographer.”

  The boy opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

  “Don’t you know what a lexicographer is?” I asked him.

  “Why don’t we show Geoff the beach,” said Ora.

  “Splendid idea,” said Matthew. “The evenings are beginning to lengthen. There should be time for a short walk.”

  “Geoff, why don’t you get changed,” said Ora. “I’ll show you your room.”

  When the boy came downstairs, he was wearing brown leather shoes with laces on them, jeans and a red jumper which billowed outwards, concealing his belly.

  “I’m always amazed she never hurts herself,” Ora said as I began my flight down the cliff path.

  There was a mixture of awe and fear in her voice. Ora was easy to impress.

  “Well, we do use it to access the beach on a daily basis,” said Matthew. “It’s your child who is struggling.”

  The boy took a long time to reach the bottom. His face was the same colour as his jumper. We had to wait for him to catch his breath before we began our walk. I picked up rocks and seaweed and recited their names with pride, giving them their correct classifications. Ora exclaimed over them.

  “I don’t know how you remember all those names. It’s amazing, isn’t it?” she said to the boy.

  The boy yawned and put his hands in his pockets. Matthew grunted.

  “Glad to see my education is producing some results.”

  That night, the boy slept in the room to the left of mine. Ora slept with Matthew, because there weren’t any other bedrooms and Matthew’s bed was big enough for two people.

  It took a long time for the boy to come out of his room the next morning. Ora said it was because he was doing his homework. He only came downstairs when we were eating our lunch.

  “Matthew’s offered to drive us around the coast,” Ora said to him when we finished. “That’ll be fun, won’t it?”

  The boy nodded and brought his hand to his mouth to cover a yawn.

  “We’d better press on,” said Matthew. “We have lots of things to show Geoffrey this afternoon, don’t we, Astrid?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Wexford is full of delights.”

  The boy made a strange sound at the back of his throat, a sort of gagging noise.

  In the car, the boy and I sat as far apart as possible, our bodies pressed against the doors. We drove along narrow country roads and stopped whenever we saw an interesting landmark or geographical feature. Ora took photographs. Matthew talked about the history of the area and I chipped in.

  On the way home, we went to Hook Head to look at the lighthouse. Despite the brightness of the day, it was cold. The water around the cliffs was white; it foamed and hissed as it landed on the rocks.

  “Well Geoffrey, one could argue that this is indeed God’s country, if one was so inclined. Don’t you agree?”

  “It’s okay,” the boy muttered.

  Matthew snorted, one of the explosive snorts he reserved for remarks he thought foolish.

  “If you say so. Come on, we’ll walk around the lighthouse.”

  Matthew strode off over the springy green grass. The lighthouse was surrounded by ridged grey rocks. Since we were frequent visitors there, Matthew was satisfied that I could reach the other side unaided. But it always took a long time; the rocks required some negotiation. I fell into a groove, searching for clefts in the rock, then inching forward. My progress was steady; only the occasional wobble impeded it. The boy was a little ahead. He took sluggish steps, his hands in his pockets. I stayed close to the lighthouse, but its solid surface was beyond my reach. Ora fell into step beside me.

  “How are you going there?”

  “Fine.”

  I didn’t look around or say anything more; the task of putting one foot in front of the other took up all the space in my head.

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but it’s quite rough, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged; my gaze was directed at the ground.

  “Maybe we’d be a bit faster if we went together. We could beat the boys to the other side.”

  I looked up. She was holding out her elbow. Without looking at her, I took it. We walked around the rest of the lighthouse without saying a word. I was able to count the stark black and white lines painted on the lighthouse and gaze out at the snowcapped waves that surrounded it.

  It was twilight when we arrived home. The boy went into the kitchen to help Ora cook dinner.

  “Why can’t they help?” I heard him whisper as they went in.

  “They’ve got work to do too,” Ora replied.

  I followed Matthew into his study and we immersed ourselves in the National Geographic pullout, which depicted the skeletons of primitive cavemen. Time disappeared as we held the pictures up to Matthew’s skeleton. Matthew positioned my hands on the skeleton, as we compared the modern and ancient bones. The modern bones were longer and denser. A knock on the door jolted me back to the present.

  “Yes, who is it?” Matthew barked.

  “It’s me,” said Ora. “I hate to disturb you, but dinner’s ready.”

  “All right, we’re coming.”

  “But I’m not hungry,” I whispered.

  “Well, she’s been fussing in that kitchen for hours,” said Matthew. “We’d better do what we’re told, for once.”

  In the kitchen, I rummaged for cutlery to set the table. The boy brought saucepans to the counter. Matthew pulled a bottle of wine out of the fridge.

  “I unearthed this specimen. Hope it will complement our food tonight. Some local woman brewed it up.”

  He held the bottle out to Ora, who wiped it with a cloth and examined it.

  “Elderflower wine. Lovely! But don’t you want to save it for a special occasion?”

  “You’ve brought your son to visit; that’s occasion enough.”

  His voice was gruff. There was a pink flush on Ora’s cheeks.

  “You hear that, Geoff?” Ora said.

  The boy didn’t say anything. He fiddled with one of the saucepan lids.

  I sat at my place and the boy put a plate in front of me. It was covered in long tubes, which were smeared with sludge-green paste. I poked at the paste with my fork. A piece of chicken revealed itself.

  “Ora, what on earth is this?” asked Matthew.

  “It’s chicken pesto.”

  Ora came to the table and put plates of food in front of Matthew and herself.

  “Why’s it so green?” I asked. “Is it mould?”

  Ora made a gulping noise.

  “It does look rather unorthodox,” said Matthew, “but it’s a shame to waste food.”

  He poked at the paste too, then took a bite. The boy was shovelling food into his mouth. There was already a dent in the mound on his plate.

  “I think it’s lovely,” he said.

  For the first time since his arrival, there was animation in his voice. I scraped the paste off the chicken and ate it piece by piece. I didn’t touch the tubes; they had the same texture as rubber. Halfway through the meal, Matthew jum
ped up and left the room, saying he needed to use the bathroom. He was gone for a long time.

  “I hope it didn’t upset your stomach,” said Ora, when he returned. “I suppose it’s a bit richer than you’re used to.”

  “That’s what bouts of amoebic dysentery will do to you.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I just wanted to make something nice.”

  Ora’s voice wobbled.

  “I daresay you did. But we’re more accustomed to campfire cuisine.”

  The boy asked for a second helping and Ora jumped up to get it.

  “There you are,” she said.

  The wobble was gone from her voice.

  “You’ll get indigestion if you eat too much,” I informed the boy.

  He didn’t reply, just kept eating. His slurping sounds filled the room.

  After dinner, we went into the living room.

  “Where’s your telly?” the boy asked.

  I knew that telly was short for television.

  “We don’t have one,” I said.

  The boy’s mouth formed an ‘O.’

  “Do you not get bored?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a quaint pastime we like to indulge in,” said Matthew. “It’s called reading.”

  He gave a dry chuckle. The boy looked at the ground. I wondered what he saw there that was so interesting.

  “Didn’t you say we were going to listen to some music, Matthew?” said Ora.

  Matthew went to the antique record player and placed The Well-Tempered Clavier on the turntable. I went to sit in the armchair to the left of the fireplace. The boy sat on the stool near the window, behind the table Matthew and I used for our evening chess games. The board obscured his face, as it waited for our next move.

  “You love Bach, don’t you,” said Ora.

  “Music reached perfection with J.S. Bach,” Matthew said. “He has no equal.”

  As Matthew slipped the needle into the groove, the boy got up and moved around the couch, towards the record player.

  “That’s gorgeous,” he said. “It’s vintage.”

  His voice was peculiar; it spanned several octaves within the same sentence, sometimes squeaking, sometimes growling. His hand hovered above the record player’s gleaming mahogany surface.

  “You can’t touch it,” I said, folding my arms. “Only Matthew’s allowed to touch it.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  The record made strange scratching noises. Matthew fiddled with the needle, muttering under his breath. The boy was still standing by the record player, watching Matthew.

  “Sir, if you want, I think I know what...”

  He reached over and touched the needle, before Matthew could stop him. I waited for Matthew’s roar of retribution. But the record sounded normal again.

  “Thank you, Geoffrey,” said Matthew. “It’s useful to have someone with a technical bent in the house.”

  The boy’s mouth opened and shut. Again, no sound came out. His face was red, like before on the beach. He retreated to his chair.

  “Why don’t you say anything when Matthew talks to you?” I asked.

  “Leave him be, Astrid,” said Matthew.

  I didn’t know why Matthew was cross with me. He was the one who told me that it was important to have an enquiring mind.

  We listened to the music in silence. Matthew went over to the couch to sit beside Ora and she rested her head on his shoulder. I guessed that she was tired after all the cooking.

  It was sunny again the next day. Matthew set an even faster pace than usual during our morning walk; I had to run to keep up with him. He left the beach before I did. This always happened when Ora visited. He said it was because he didn’t want to leave her on her own for too long. I wandered among the sand dunes, tweaking at pieces of dry grass, letting sand run through my fingers. The sand was thick with the fragments of shells. I picked some of them up and examined them. The beach was empty; it stretched into infinity.

  As I reached the top of the cliff path, a tinny sound crept out of the shed at the bottom of the garden. I closed the garden gate and ran over to it. The door was ajar; I pushed it open. There were no windows in the shed; the light was dim. A figure sat at the other end of the shed. It was the boy. He sat in a sagging deck chair, his back to me. His radio was perched on top of two metal buckets that Matthew used for the garden. He didn’t turn as I came over to stand beside him.

  “Haven’t you heard of knocking?”

  A storm brewed in his voice, rain clouds gathered.

  “Well it is our shed,” I said. “What are you listening to?”

  “Nothing you’d be interested in. So you can either shut up or get out.”

  The boy twiddled with various buttons. The radio began to produce a disjointed series of sounds, a drum beat, scratching, the tinkle of bells, a droning sound which grew into a swirling melody, a piano. The sounds began to form layers. There were voices too; first a male voice made incoherent sounds, then a female voice sang about a day without a night and a body without a heart. The words didn’t make much sense, but they were filled with yearning. At intervals, another female voice, fainter than the first, repeated the word ‘hey.’ The sounds fused together and formed a current which carried me along, took me far away. I was a shooting star, travelling through the galaxies. A tingling sensation spread outwards from my chest, through my veins. Towards the end, the rhythm started to slow and the other sounds began to fall away, to fade into silence. The boy pressed another button, which made a whirring sound.

  “What was that?” I asked him.

  “Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack.”

  “Unfinished Symphony? Like Schubert?”

  “No. Just Unfinished Sympathy.”

  He spoke with exaggerated slowness.

  “What instruments do they use?”

  “They don’t use any. The sounds’re generated by electronics.”

  There were no longer any peaks or troughs in his voice. It carried the same note of authority as Matthew’s did when he talked about his samples.

  “Could you play it again?” I asked.

  “Okay. If you want.”

  He sounded surprised. As we listened, he pressed his fists against his cheeks. His skin puffed out over his fingers. This time, I began to discern a pattern in the tinkling of the bells. Two, two, two, three. I was able to sift through the layers of sound, separate them. As the beats died away, I said,

  “I think that’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s okay,” the boy said.

  “That’s not the right word. It’s exhilarating.”

  “I prefer harder stuff. You know, faster. But it’s good. Yeah.”

  He took his fists away from his cheeks. His skin was covered in little white marks, from the pressure of his knuckles.

  “Did you know there are nine bell sounds?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a pattern; it keeps repeating. Listen out for it.”

  “Yes, teacher,” the boy muttered.

  Over and over, the tinkling bells and soaring melodies filled the shed. The music hypnotised us, made everything outside the shed disappear. In the distance, we heard Ora calling the boy’s name. He pressed another button and the music stopped.

  “They call me Not So Jazzy at school,” he blurted into the sudden silence.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Like the DJ, Jazzy Jeff. Except not as cool. That’s what they think anyway.”

  He was sullen, defeated. His arms folded across his chest.

  “What’s a DJ?”

  “You don’t know what a DJ is?”

  His voice echoed mine; it was gleeful, knowing.

  “DJs
make music come together. They mix all these different strands of music to make one big flow. It’s like art, except they use lots of old bits to make something new. It sounds stupid. You won’t get it.”

  “No it isn’t. It’s fascinating.”

  We heard Ora’s voice again, more insistent this time. The boy snatched up his radio. We went around to the front of the house, where Ora was loading her car. The boy placed the radio in the boot.

  “Bye,” he said, his gaze once again directed at the ground.

  “Bye, Jazz.”

  He laughed. It was an unexpected sound, rich and deep. I grinned back. Matthew and I lingered as the car drove off.

  “What on earth did you call him?” Matthew said.

  “Jazz. After the DJ.”

  “Don’t talk gibberish.”

  A smile crept onto my face. The idea that I now spoke a language Matthew couldn’t understand tickled me. I followed him to the house, my head still throbbing with the sounds.

  Jazz’s thaw was gradual. Though he was now an almost constant presence at weekends, he and I travelled in different orbits most of the time. When he wasn’t being force-fed history and scenery, he was in his room or in the kitchen with Ora. They hugged each other a lot.

  Jazz never read any books, or went outside of his own free will. And he never spoke to us unless we spoke to him. Even when he did speak, he hesitated first, testing the words before he said them. When Matthew spoke to him, he sometimes forgot to reply, just opened and shut his mouth. Maybe it was because he never knew the answers to Matthew’s questions. And he called Matthew sir.

  To me, Jazz was a strange specimen, a riddle I was determined to solve. I spied on him through a crack in the door of his room. Sounds leaked through the crack, tinny musical notes, the crackle of paper, the scratch of a pen blotting out words. His homework took a long time. I asked him why it took so long and what he was learning at his school, but he wasn’t interested in talking about it, said it was boring. When he did talk about school, the stormclouds filled his voice.