In a Land of Plenty

by Tim Pears

  ‘Where do you think you’re going, James? Put Steven’s tracksuit on to keep warm.’

  James ignored him and kept on walking.

  ‘Did you hear me, boy? You come back here and cheer the lads on!’

  James gritted his teeth and carried on. He could hear Mr Rudge’s voice filling up with anger, and the sound of it pleased him almost as much as it scared him.

  ‘All right, then! You keep walking, James Freeman! You keep walking now and you walk right out of this team!’

  James didn’t stop and he didn’t turn round, but he had the feeling – he wasn’t sure – that the game itself had stopped and not only Mr Rudge but all the players, and the referee, and assorted parents and other spectators, they were standing still and watching him limp across the grass, away from the game he had loved and now hated, towards the dressing-rooms. When he realized that he was sobbing he didn’t know whether it was from the pain or from the confusion. Behind him Mr Rudge was shouting something else but he couldn’t hear what, the voice was getting smaller; he could hear his own voice telling himself, over and over whispering inside his head: ‘I’m a man, I’m a man, I’m a man.’

  James turned the shower on and by the time he’d peeled off his kit the water was running hot. He stepped beneath it. The water soaked his hair and ran down over his face, his neck, his shoulders, his front, his back, as he shifted position. It flowed down his stomach, hot water, over his genitals, his bottom, his thighs, knees, calves, feet, hot healing water. He wasn’t sobbing any more, he was crying, shaking; but it didn’t feel like crying, it felt good. The pain in his hips melted away, and the pain in his head, too. He found a bar of soap on a rack by the taps and rubbed it into his hair until there was a thick lather, which rippled down his face. Then he soaped his body all over, and when he’d finished he stood there till the hot water had washed all the soap away.

  After he’d dried himself in the empty dressing-room – alone in that echoey chamber meant for a squad of athletes – he sat for a while fully dressed, his kit packed away, staring at nothing. ‘Fuck you, Rudge,’ he said aloud, and his broken voice sounded brave and resonant. ‘I’m alive and I’m all right. Fuck all of you.’ The resonance of his voice hovered and died.

  ‘This isn’t happening to me, God,’ he whispered.

  James left before the others came in and sat in the car with Garfield, waiting for Lewis. He was sure Garfield would say something, would give him some moral advice about how a boy should conduct himself; but Garfield didn’t say anything.

  Lewis was the first out of the changing-rooms.

  ‘You’ve really upset Rudge,’ he told James as he got in the car. The omission of the prefix ‘Mr’ was a small but brave act on Lewis’s part: James saw Garfield’s reaction, a disapproving glance at his son. James knew the omission was for his benefit, a comradely gesture, and he appreciated it, although he didn’t reply. They drove home in silence.

  They dropped James at the gates of the big house. Lewis passed his bag to him, and caught his eye. ‘It’ll work out all right, Jay,’ he said. James nodded, and turned to the gates.

  He limped down the drive; his right hip hurt more than his left – it was hardly pain in his left, just something there that didn’t feel right, like his right hip had been a year earlier. He considered what he’d do when he got in and he decided to take a bath, a deep, hot bath after football, and then he realized he only wanted to get more relief from the pain, already, so soon after his long shower. Time was running out. They were wrong; they were all wrong. It wasn’t growing pains inside him, there was something serious the matter, it was getting worse, and it was time to tell someone.

  But who? Charles was away, and that was just as well: his father would chivvy James along, maybe organize a party for him or take the whole family out to his favourite restaurant.

  Of course, it was his mother he had to tell, and there she was, planting bulbs in the corner of the garden that was hers, bent over in an old mackintosh and wellies. He turned and limped across the grass in her direction. Mummy, I am sick, he thought, hold me and help me. Mum, I need you. And then he imagined her face cloud with remote anxiety. James stopped, forgetting his own self-pity for a moment, and he decided that he didn’t want to burden her. He turned and walked back towards the house.

  Why was Zoe leaving again? She would take him seriously, wouldn’t she? He approached the house. At the left side the gate to the back yard was open: a grey Mini-van was parked with the bonnet open; most of the engine was on the ground beside it, with various disconnected leads and tubes spilling over the grille and wings, like a patient hideously abandoned on the operating table. Stanley was forbidding, he didn’t like James, and he wouldn’t ask someone for help, he’d take care of his problems himself and would expect anyone else to do the same. Edna, on the other hand, would sympathize. Maybe he should tell Edna. He stopped walking. She’d give him a hug and a mug of hot chocolate and cut him a thick slice of cake and make him feel a lot better; but he didn’t think she’d do any more than that, she wouldn’t really know what to do outside the kitchen. She kept a first-aid kit in the pantry, she was the one they ran to with a knocked elbow or a scraped knee. But now he needed more than a dab of Acraflavin or a plaster.

  He resumed walking, not to the back door as usual but on past the front of the house. It was a shame Simon had retreated into his room; there was something kind about Simon and if he’d only be himself, instead of wanting to be like their father, he might have been the person to talk to. There wasn’t anyone else, James accepted. Except, it occurred to him, for Laura, and sardonic laughter burst from his mouth: four years younger than he was, she was about the most sane and able person in the household; one person you could trust with your body and your frightened heart. And she was nine years old; it was ridiculous.

  James’ bitter laughter had died by the time he realized that he’d limped right past the front door. He was despairing of finding help and he was beginning to shrink inside, he wanted to hide, he wanted to curl up and be taken care of; he wanted to curl up into a small boy and be wheeled in a wheelbarrow away from his mutinously altering body. He walked between the rose beds, past heaps of compost and grass cuttings. A wispy column of smoke rose from a pile of leaves.

  James reached the closed door of the large potting-shed. It was hung on sprung hinges, so that Alfred could push it open with his hands full, like a waiter. He kept the hinges well oiled: the slightest squeak would annoy him. James pushed it and it opened without a sound. He stepped inside. The door swung silently closed behind him. The great shed was dimly lit, window panes obscured by tomato plants trained up the outside wall.

  James stood still, barely breathing, as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. Along the side wall beneath the window ran a long, wide shelf covered with seed-trays and pots of cuttings and bulbs. The largest, back wall directly ahead held Alfred’s tools, hung on nails. They emerged from the dark as James stood there, tools of every size and horticultural use, from trowels and secateurs, to spades and hoes, to rakes and scythes. They emerged each with their own specific, evolved shape; as old as Alfred himself, thought James.

  On the brick floor of the shed were mowers and wheelbarrows and carts. The light seemed to spread across the shed to the far wall, along whose length ran Alfred’s work-bench with its two – light and heavy – vices, sawdust, odd pieces of wood. But James didn’t want his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness; he didn’t want to see everything. He climbed into a cart, curled up and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  The surgeon at the orthopaedic hospital was a tall, dignified man with white hair and a bow-tie whom James recognized from his parents’ cocktail parties. He manipulated James’ legs at odd painful angles, murmuring as if in agreement with himself whenever he caused James to wince. He showed little desire to look James in the eye, as if the boy would be awkward to get into focus. Instead he addressed Mary: ‘You two go and get an X-ray, and then I’ll ex
plain the problem.’

  They waited in a large, bright, high-ceilinged room while a woman in a white coat ushered people behind a screen and stepped out to push a button: the machine hummed; she went back behind the screen for a few moments, reappeared and pushed the button, half a dozen times for each patient. The woman’s movements in her work were jerky like Stanley’s, methodical and accomplished. James watched her. He wanted Mary to hold his hand. He didn’t like waiting.

  Eventually it was his turn. The X-ray woman didn’t look at him either, but ordered him onto a table and positioned his limbs with one hand while manoeuvring the huge X-ray camera with the other. Each time she disappeared, and the machine hummed, like some animal hypnotizing its prey before striking, James closed his eyes and wished that he could disappear.

  Back in the surgeon’s office they looked at the X-rays pinned to a light-box.

  ‘Your son has a slipped femoral epiphysis,’ he explained to Mary, pointing at the ghostly images. ‘The top of the thigh-bone fits into the hip-socket, and with a small number of children – about one in a hundred thousand – when the bones are soft in puberty the femur slips and grows out of place.’

  ‘How bad is it?’ Mary asked.

  ‘The right one’s rather advanced. We’ll have to cut the femur, alter its position, and put a plate in to clamp it in place. The left is much better; we’ll just insert some pins. Then have James back in in a year or two and take out all the hardware.’

  James scrutinized the ethereal X-rays of his damaged bones. It was hard to believe they were his bones. They looked all right to him, but then he had nothing to compare them with.

  His mother asked practical questions; she sounded like someone else. ‘How long will he have to stay in hospital?’

  ‘Two or three months, Mary. Maybe a bit longer.’

  ‘When do you want to operate?’

  ‘Bring him back in tomorrow, and we’ll operate the day after.’

  That night back at home James lay in bed with his teeth chattering, but he also felt relief that he was going to be dealt with. He found that he was almost able, by concentrating hard, to detach himself from his body (he couldn’t quite detach his face, for some reason, which was why his teeth chattered) and in his imagination he gave over his body, a willing sacrifice, to the surgeon’s knife.

  The hospital smelled of anxiety and antiseptic. The boys’ ward had sixteen beds. Two or three held recent arrivals from the operating theatre, drowsy and moaning. The rest looked both bored and alert: they were trapped in their beds, with legs in plaster, or hooked up in traction, or inert beneath cages that kept the weight of the bed-linen off their limbs. One small boy with bent legs hopped from bed to bed on a tiny pair of crutches.

  ‘You been in before?’ he asked when he got to James. His voice was gritty and cheerful. ‘This is my ninth time. One for every year. I’m nine, see.’

  ‘Right.’

  The boy didn’t look big enough to go to school. ‘It’s not too bad here. The teacher’s a dragon but the food’s all right.’

  ‘I’m not allowed to eat anything today,’ James told him.

  ‘Well, you don’t want to be sick when you’re being operated on, do you?’

  James thought about it, and agreed. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked the boy.

  ‘It’s my legs this time. I’ve had them done twice.’ He leaned on his crutches and swung his legs. ‘They’re the wrong shape, see? I’ve had the lot done,’ he added proudly. ‘Hips, kidneys, bladder, knees. I’ll probably have more after this. What’s your name?’

  ‘James Freeman.’

  ‘I’m Graham Wrigley. Well, James, I better be off to say hello to the girls. They’re only through that door, see? That’s another good thing about this place.’ He turned and hobbled away towards large double doors.

  A male nurse from another ward took James to a small, grubby bathroom. ‘Got to shave you for the operation,’ he said. James couldn’t work out what he meant.

  ‘Hygiene. Drop your pyjamas.’ He used a safety razor, warm water and no soap. His fingers were thick and clumsy. James watched him shave the pubic hair that had recently grown and he tried to rise further away from his body. I’ll float away, to the clouds, he said to himself.

  The surgeon visited him on the ward with four attendants half his age and half his height. His gaze was again averted from James, and he addressed his subordinates, as he marked each of James’ thighs with a red felt-tip pen.

  James woke up from the operation in a dim room feeling as if he were immersed in a thick, poisoned liquid. The pain was hot and deep, and although they gave him painkillers at regular, lengthy intervals it only went away when he slept, fitfully. The next day he woke up back in the boys’ ward. Gradually the stupor of the anaesthetic wore off and he realized he couldn’t move: he was encased in plaster from his right ankle to his upper chest; only his left leg and groin were free. The plaster kept him prone.

  A nurse passed his bed. ‘I need to go to the lavatory,’ James whispered.

  ‘You need a bottle or a bed-pan?’ she asked. To his blank response she added: ‘Do you want to pass water?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he whispered.

  She brought him a glass bottle and he laid it between his legs and inserted his penis into its neck. Nothing happened: his bladder remained full. He didn’t know what to do. Peeing wasn’t a mechanical action, it was just a thought from which the action followed. Flowed. But now it didn’t, and James had no idea what to do. The nurse came back. ‘I haven’t finished yet,’ he whispered, and she went away again.

  Panic and embarrassment made his skin prickle. Eventually he took the empty bottle from between his legs and placed it on the locker beside the bed, with its paper bag over it. An hour later he tried again. Again nothing happened when he wanted it to: his muscle, gland, whatever it was, failed to respond to his thought. It was visiting time: the ward was filling up, families clustering around the other beds. He lay with the bottle in place.

  I want to leave this body, but I can’t, he thought. I just want to be a passenger, but the machine’s no good. He’d planned to render his body superfluous, not really there, the plaster cast in effect hollow, but it hadn’t worked. He couldn’t escape.

  In the end, when he’d given up and was thinking about something else entirely, urine trickled into the bottle, and his bladder emptied.

  Time passed slowly. James had never realized how long a day lasts. They were woken briskly by the night nurses at six a.m., washed, given a drink, and then left to lie there like fish beached by the sea of sleep for hours before breakfast.

  Being an orthopaedic hospital, with children in for lengthy periods, there was a school. The teacher turned out to be a solid, middle-aged woman with a hearty disposition and a dragon’s bad breath. She sat on the beds of children with no means of escape – tied down by traction pulleys, weighed down in plaster – and breathed her breath at them, wilting the flowers visitors had brought and sending the more sensitive children into inexplicable relapses. Maybe that’s what Graham meant, he wondered, but he couldn’t verify it because Graham had left.

  ‘I’m going home. I don’t mind,’ he’d told James.

  ‘Are you going to need another operation?’

  ‘Of course I will. I always do, see? Why are you whispering?’

  ‘I’m not whispering,’ James whispered.

  ‘Well, there’s no point in trying to keep secrets in here,’ Graham advised him.

  Mary visited James with one or other of his brothers and sister. Simon was sometimes unable to resist the temptation to sidle away from James’ bed and watch the television that was on a high shelf in the opposite corner of the ward, but generally he was as talkative as he used to be; he seemed to be recovering his old friendliness.

  ‘Father took me to Munich for the weekend,’ he told James one Monday. ‘I spent all day in the hotel.’

  ‘What on earth did you do?’ James asked.

  ‘E
verything! I watched lots of TV, they had loads of channels, and I ordered room service when I was hungry, and explored all the floors. The porters told dirty jokes to teach me German. What did the elephant say to the naked man? I’ll tell you in English, of course.’

  ‘Don’t know, Simon. What did the elephant say to the naked man?’

  ‘The elephant said: “How do you manage to eat with one of those?” You get it? Uh-oh, here’s Mum. I’ll tell you another one next time.’

  Robert didn’t say much more than usual. He sat eating James’ grapes, spitting the pips into a plastic cup. One day, though, Robert appeared with a present, something heavy wrapped in an old comic, which James tore open to find some kind of crowbar. He studied it a while, then looked up to see Robert grinning slyly at him.

  ‘What’s this for?’ James asked.

  ‘It’s a jemmy,’ Robert told him. ‘So you can break out if you have to. I couldn’t stand it, cooped up in here.’

  ‘Well, thanks,’ James said.

  ‘You know what I read?’ Robert asked. ‘“You’ve got to be planning your exit even when you’re making your entry.”’ He flashed his stony grin at James.

  ‘That’s good,’ James nodded.

  ‘Yeh. But also,’ Robert exclaimed, ‘jemmy’s a nickname for James, see?’

  ‘Really? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It was in this dictionary.’

  ‘Hey, that’s clever, Rob.’

  ‘Yeh, well, people think I’m stupid, but I’m not. I’m not stupid. I’ve got to go now.’

  Charles wasn’t sure where James’ condition lay between sickness and injury; he couldn’t work out whether his middle son was a malingerer or a heroic victim. He would visit three days running only to berate James for lying in bed all day, or else not make an appearance for weeks but then arrive with a boxful of presents to make up for his absence. There were so many toys, games and sweets that James distributed them among his fellow patients after Charles had left. He hoped his father wouldn’t recognize his gifts in another boy’s hands, but he needn’t have worried: Charles didn’t even know what they were, having sent Judith Peach out to buy them.