I’ll Go To Bed At Noon

by Gerard Woodward

  ‘It is you,’ said Colette, seeing her son standing before her. The helmet that had formerly contained his head was now under his arm, and he slowly pulled off his gauntlets. It took Colette a few moments to be sure it was Janus, because he looked very different. The beard and long hair that had enveloped his face for several years was gone. As a result his face looked small and raw, almost embryonic. The short hair Janus had cut himself, Colette could tell by the ridged, patchy quality of the cut.

  ‘Where the hell did you get that?’ she indicated with her eyes that she meant the motorbike.

  ‘This? Just a bloke I know. He wanted to get rid of it. Threw in the helmet and gloves and goggles for nothing. She’s my little darling. What do you think of her, Janus Brian, I’ll take you out for a ride on her later.’

  ‘No thanks,’ Janus Brian laughed weakly, not stirring from his chair, nor hardly looking up from the mess of his fish and chips, unsurprised by his nephew’s arrival, as he was unsurprised by everything.

  ‘You’re not staying here, surely.’ Colette said to her son.

  ‘Why not? I’ve brought the small tent with me.’

  ‘You can’t stay here.’

  ‘But you said on your card, woman. “Come and visit”.’

  ‘No I didn’t. I didn’t. Not now. Not this minute. I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Janus, ‘In that case my feelings are rather hurt. Why shouldn’t I come on holiday with my family? I’ve got every right.’

  ‘But Aldous . . . daddy – he would be so upset to see you here. He would be devastated, to be frank. It would ruin the holiday for him, just as he’s starting to relax . . .’

  ‘Where is he anyway?’

  ‘He’s at a bed and breakfast in the town.’

  ‘What? So Janus Brian . . . you don’t mean Janus Brian is sleeping here in the tent.’

  ‘Yes. And Julian in the car.’

  Janus gave a sigh of disbelief.

  ‘I told you he was up to something didn’t I? He’s finally got you into bed with him.’

  ‘Don’t be so filthy-minded, Janus,’ said Colette.

  ‘You’re the one who’s filthy . . .’

  ‘Don’t make smutty remarks, boy,’ said Janus Brian through a mouth full of batter.

  ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Don’t talk to your uncle like that.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him how I like.’

  ‘Oh Christ.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘I can’t believe it. Just as things were starting to work out. Just as Janus Brian was starting to feel better and daddy was starting to look cheerful, you have to come along out of the blue and louse everything up.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything . . .’

  ‘You haven’t been here five minutes and we’re already rowing. I think you should turn that machine around and drive straight back to London, straight back to where you came from.’

  ‘Too late,’ said Janus brightly, ‘I’ve already paid for a night from that nice old gentleman in the office. He said I had the pick of the site. I can camp anywhere I like. And, looking around, I chance to see that there is an ideal spot for a tent just there,’ he pointed to an area of empty grass next to the car.

  ‘No, Janus,’ said Colette, pleading, as though against an act of wilful cruelty, ‘you can’t stay here. I won’t have it.’

  Janus teased his mother for a little while longer until finally he agreed to go. After all, he’d only come over to the tent once he was certain his father wasn’t around, and now he quickly mounted his motorbike, kick-started it, and trundled off, his mother recanting, ‘You don’t have to go this minute,’ she called, ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  She watched her son as he returned to the crunchy drive, and then slowly trundled around the camp site. It soon became evident that he wasn’t heading for the exit. Slowly the awfulness of what Janus was doing dawned on her, as he passed out of sight behind distant caravans, emerging on the far side from behind the toilet block, he drew up on an empty patch of grass and began assembling his tent.

  ‘The cheeky swine,’ said Colette, ‘he’s putting his tent up over there so he can spy on us. He’s in full view. What’ll Aldous say?’

  ‘Shall I go over and tell him to shift his butt?’ said Janus Brian.

  ‘It wouldn’t do any good. He’d just laugh. Oh God. When Aldous comes over in the morning, what’ll happen then?’

  What happened was nothing. Janus spent the morning sitting on the grass outside his tent, no bigger, from Colette’s perspective, than a cat, and Aldous came over at about half past nine, bright and cheerful as he always was since moving into the bed and breakfast. He made no secret of the fact that he was really enjoying himself there, especially those meticulous little breakfasts Mrs Brown served him. A night of pure silence and solitude, then the descent to a table of white linen, toast in a silver toast rack, fried eggs and bacon on white porcelain, tea in a china pot, jars of marmalade. It was civilised and solitary, and Aldous had experienced these conditions rarely in his life.

  And Janus remained at his tent, invisible to Aldous who would not, from that range, have picked him out from the dozens of other nondescript tents and caravans that populated the distant areas of the camp site. As Aldous merrily chatted, Colette was conscious of her son watching, and became aware, instantly, that this was to become part of a larger strategy of torment by observation. Janus watched his family continually, becoming a voyeur, almost, of his own life.

  Colette, observed, felt continually intruded upon and yet was powerless to do anything about it. She felt guilty for not telling Aldous that his son was so close by and watching his every move. She felt almost as if she’d been adulterous, and felt a strong urge to confess, but resisted, because if her husband had caught wind of his son’s presence, the holiday would have been ruined entirely.

  She stole glances at distant Janus whenever Aldous wasn’t looking, and noticed something odd about him, something she couldn’t quite define at first, but it looked as though her son was wearing a mask. Sitting at his tent, staring in their direction, holding a mask to his face. Of all the odd things Janus had done in his life, had he done anything odder? What sort of mask was it? But she realized it was not a mask but a pair of binoculars. He was watching them through binoculars.

  Colette felt furious. Whenever Aldous’s back was turned she gestured frantically at Janus for him to put the binoculars away. She made a rejection gesture of two hands sweeping away invisible nonsense, and the gesture drew an immediate response from Janus, a friendly wave, a thumbs-up sign that showed not only how alert he was to Colette’s movements, but how much he seemed to be enjoying himself.

  He was enjoying the blindness he had instilled in his father, a quality he intensified over the coming days by approaching ever closer to Aldous’s lines of sight, while remaining unseen. When the family traipsed off into the town, Janus would follow, sometimes only a few feet behind, resplendently invisible to Aldous. Daringly he would sometimes sidestep through alleyways and shops to emerge in front of the party, and Colette’s heart would jump into her mouth as Janus passed before them, one amongst a crowd, a ghost, sniggering, as his father gazed indifferently into shop windows. Once he went on ahead, waited in a bakery for the family to approach, emerging so suddenly and close to Aldous that he could have knocked him over, and then passing swiftly. Colette could hardly believe that Aldous had not seen him, and looked at him carefully, looking for any sign that her husband had been disturbed by a subliminally caught glimpse of his son. But there was nothing in her husband’s face but that sunburnt, lazy, relaxed countenance he’d borne for the last week and a half.

  In the evenings Janus would come over to the tent after his father had gone to the bed and breakfast.

  ‘You’ll be going home tomorrow, won’t you Janus,’ said Colette.

  ‘Actually’, Janus said, ‘I was thinking of staying
here for some time. I could live here through to September. I like it here. I really do like it here. I think I’ll live here for ever.’

  ‘Janus, you’re going back tomorrow. Just go away. We don’t want you here.’

  ‘Who doesn’t want me here?’

  ‘No one wants you here.’

  ‘Janus Brian?’ said Janus, ‘Do you want me here?’

  Janus Brian looked as though he was about to say he would be delighted if Janus stayed, but then, remembering Colette’s predicament, thought better of it.

  ‘If it’s bothering your mother, I think you should go.’

  ‘Julian?’

  Julian, sitting in the car, pretended not to hear. Janus repeated.

  ‘Julian!’

  ‘Don’t ask Julian, it’s not fair,’ said Colette, ‘just tell me why you’re here. Is it just to torment us or what?’

  Janus gave one of his incredulous laughs.

  ‘I’m on holiday. Like you. I’m enjoying the charms of this little Tudor town. I’m enjoying the Abbey and the Avon. My only criticism is that we are in a place so far from the sea. We could hardly be further from the sea here.’

  ‘The sea’s for kids,’ said Janus Brian, somewhat despondently.

  ‘A human being needs water. Eight pints of it every day. Anything less and we’re little more than caskets of dust. Booze doesn’t count.’

  ‘I like water,’ said Colette. ‘Doctors say we’re ninety per cent water don’t they?’

  ‘Yes, except in Janus Brian’s case they say he’s ninety per cent gin.’

  ‘Don’t be rude to your uncle.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s your uncle.’

  Janus gave a cackly laugh and patted Janus Brian’s pate.

  ‘Sorry your grace,’ he said.

  When Janus had returned to his tent, Janus Brian said, ‘You worship that kid don’t you.’

  ‘I do not,’ said Colette immediately, ‘why do you say that?’

  ‘Just the way you talk to him. It’s your manner. You worship him and he knows it. He knows he can make you do or say anything. He works you like a puppet.’

  ‘Don’t talk such rubbish,’ said Colette, ‘he’s my son. For all his faults – and he’s got plenty, I’ll be the first to admit, he’s still my son.’

  ‘You’ve got other children.’

  ‘I had noticed.’

  ‘You don’t worship Julian,’ he lowered his voice in case Julian should hear.

  ‘I do worship Julian,’ said Colette, realizing, as she said it, it was no longer true. She worshipped Julian as a child, as she’d worshipped all her children. But he was no longer a child. Colette could never understand where children went when they became adults.

  ‘I worship all my children,’ the sentence hung in the air for a while, both parties examining it closely to see if there was any truth in it.

  ‘All your children,’ said Janus Brian, ‘have a sort of arrogance about them. I don’t know what it is. Janus, of course, is arrogant beyond compare, but the others, too; James, Juliette, Julian as well, in his way. It must be something to do with how you’ve always told them they are better than other people.’

  ‘But Janus is better than most other people. How many people can play the piano like he can? Perhaps a handful in the whole world – that is, if he’d kept it up, if he’d developed properly instead of throwing it all away, he could have been the greatest pianist of his generation. It’s true . . .’ Colette raised her voice to cover Janus Brian’s mocking laughter, ‘I heard it from one of his own tutors, years after he left the Academy . . . And what does he do now? Boozes his life away and plays plink-plonk jazz in pubs. That is why Aldous won’t have anything to do with him . . .’

  ‘I’ll grant you that Janus has a special talent,’ said Janus Brian, ‘I’ll certainly grant you that. There are, as you say, very few people around who can play like he does. But to play the piano truly well you have to know something about life, and I think that Janus does not yet know enough about life. He knows he doesn’t know it, and that’s why he drinks and why he’s so arrogant, to cover up that profound ignorance of his.’

  ‘You’re going to say he needs a wife, aren’t you?’

  ‘He needs to have found someone, and to have lost someone, that’s all. He’s done neither.’

  Julian’s observations of the Birmingham family opposite were becoming obsessive. Some days the daughter of the tent, still oblivious to Julian’s existence, played Swingball with her little brother, and once, the whole family gathered on the dead grass for a game of badminton doubles. Briefly their territorial range expanded right up to the skirts of Julian’s own tent, the shuttlecock claiming new ground each time a wayward shot sent it toppling to earth out of reach of the players. Julian withdrew cautiously into the mouth of the tent in case that feathered ball should somehow hook him into a relationship with the family. The thought of friendship with the daughter was too terrifying to contemplate, the little brother also, with his fashionable gear, was menacingly confident. But Julian loved to watch them, the girl especially, even though he felt no desire for her, but her bodily presence was something he felt impelled to constantly monitor.

  It was something of a relief when the fishermen arrived. They’d been deposited there by their father in a swish car, a Jaguar XJ6. Two loutish-looking youths with fair hair and red skin, permanently unbuttoned shirts revealing shallow chests, voluminous trousers. They were a source of mild, localized disturbance in that corner of the camp site, laughing loudly late at night, leaving empty beer cans outside their tent door. They were, it gradually transpired, keen anglers who spent their nights on the banks of the Avon hoping to hook wild salmon, trout, or whatever breeds of fish swam in those waters. They would usually return in the small hours of the morning, belching and farting, sniggering and stuttering, talking in loud whispers. By day their tent was a sealed prism of nylon in which they slept deeply, emerging in the late afternoon, bleary and phlegm-filled.

  One evening adult presence was absent from that corner of the camp site. The two Birmingham kids were chuckling in the porch of their frame tent, the night-anglers were smoking and drinking Harp in the mouth of their little bivouac, and Julian was writing his novel next to the car. About fifty feet of dead grass separated the Birmingham children from the night-anglers. How brave of that little boy then, to strut over to them, puffing out his little tank-topped chest, brandishing his green flares and saying

  ‘Would you like to play cards with us?’

  Suicide, Julian thought. To go over to those angling toughs, a snivelling little kid, and invite them to play cards. Pure suicide. And yet these large fair-haired boys did not smack the little one in the chops, stamp on his face, or kick him in the bottom. They didn’t even tweak his nose and jeer at him. What they said was

  ‘Yeah, alright.’

  And they popped their smouldering dog ends into the open mouths of their beer cans and sauntered over to the Birmingham children’s tent. And they played cards. They played cards inside the tent. Julian could hear them. It all began with restrained formality. Quite soon, however, the laughter came. Giggling from the girl. Eager, excited yelps from the little boy. Manly, gruff guffaws from the anglers. They got on so well. Julian was amazed.

  From that time on the anglers and the Birmingham children went everywhere together. The anglers lost interest in fishing and instead became keen on Swingball and Badminton. A frisbee was produced, which extended even further the territorial claim of these people, a new outpost added to their empire every time the frisbee floated into uncharted regions. The anglers were introduced to the Birmingham parents, who seemed to like them. Julian could rarely make out the words of their conversations. Instead he got a sense of their flavour, which was nervously jocular. And he was fascinated to see where this friendship would lead. Was the girl a virgin? Almost certainly yes. Was she about to lose her virginity? It was a possibility. It amazed Julian how these fishing yobs, havi
ng hooked not a salmon but a sweet young girl, had become gentlemanly in an almost old-fashioned way. But surely the taking of this young girl must have been high on these youths minds. The problem was to escape both the parents and the little brother, and then to sort it out between themselves which one was to have her. A mountain of obstacles. But one evening they seemed to have managed it. To Julian’s intense astonishment, though he couldn’t be sure, the girl and just one of the fishermen were alone together in the tent. He saw the rest of the family go off in the car, and he saw one of the fishermen saunter off alone into the town. The girl was alone in her tent, and just one of the fishermen was alone in his. And then, after perhaps half an hour of silence from each tent, the girl emerged from hers and skipped, ever so self-consciously, in her bikini bottoms and a yellow pullover, to the fisherman’s tent, and entered.

  Julian’s heart faltered. He could not believe what he had just seen. This demure young virgin had entered the narrow space of the fisherman’s tent, skimpily clad. Surely she wasn’t going to give herself to such a boorish lout. Julian almost felt like marching over and ordering her back to her own tent. He felt like telling his mother and Janus Brian what he had just seen. He felt like sneaking over to the fisherman’s tent and listening at the wall.

  But at that moment he was distracted by the arrival of his older brother, who’d come over on his motorbike.

  Colette had observed that evening, with relief, that Janus was packing away his tent and was loading up his motorbike. She was glad because she didn’t think she could continue to deceive Aldous for much longer, and that the cruel trick they had been forced to play on him would soon be over. She assumed that he’d come to say his goodbyes. Janus Brian was dozing in the tent. He’d taken recently to wearing only his underpants while at the tent, the heat was so intense. To protect his scalp he wore a small, perky trilby hat with a feather in it. Though shading Janus Brian’s scalp, the heavy tweed of this garment caused the sweat to pour down his face. Janus Brian also continually wore sun shades that clipped onto his normal spectacles, and which could be raised and lowered according to the prevailing light conditions. When raised these twin dark lenses sat above and beyond his face, like a pair of cartoon eyebrows. And this was how he reposed. Socks, underpants, glasses with raised shades, tweed trilby. Exhausted.