In a Land of Plenty

by Tim Pears

‘Hey, grumpy features!’ Alice called to James as they walked past the shallow end. ‘We’re all going now, Mr Crinkly Skin!’

  ‘I thought you didn’t even like the water, James,’ Laura called. James decided it would be best to ignore them. He closed his eyes.

  ‘Looks like Zoe’s been teaching him one of her yoga positions,’ he heard Alice tell Laura.

  ‘Water yoga!’ Laura agreed. ‘James is a water yogi,’ he heard, her voice trailing away.

  He opened his eyes. ‘I am a camera,’ he whispered to himself. ‘I’m a voyeur.’ And he stayed there a while longer, wondering whether his alarming and unwelcome lust for Laura, who was practically his sister, was incestuous; and hoping it would vanish as suddenly as it had arisen. He resolved never to go swimming with her again, ever, or even to imagine her in her tight black swimsuit, to picture taking it off, one shoulder, then the other, peeling it down over her breasts … And then he summoned up memories of that year’s FA Cup Final, concentrating on the move that culminated in Charlie George’s winning goal, until his capricious prick had returned to its normal size.

  When James got to the changing-room Robert was still drying himself. James dried and dressed quickly. He yanked his T-shirt down over his shoulders.

  ‘Come on, Robert,’ he snapped, grabbing his bag, ‘why do you always take so bloody long?’

  ‘Thirty lengths,’ Robert told him. ‘Thirty lengths. I’ll be doing fifty by Christmas.’

  The following Saturday James spent in Alfred’s rose garden photographing insects. Or at least trying to. He didn’t have a macro-lens and so attempted to get in close enough using the end of his long zoom. Ladybirds, fruitflies and caterpillars crawled in and out of focus on wavering petals.

  Alfred pottered around, singing:

  ‘Have you been in love, me visor, have you felt the plain?

  I’d rather be in love me self than be in jail again.

  The girl I loved was beautiful, I’ll have you all to know, and I saw her in my garden where potatoes grow.’

  * * *

  James hummed Alfred’s tunes to himself, an abstract refrain, as he looked through the tunnel of his zoom, and hours passed in contented concentration.

  Saturday being Edna’s day off, she was visiting her sister, and Laura and Alice took over the kitchen in her absence. They baked a cake in the shape of a fairytale castle and proceeded to cover it in icing of all different colours.

  ‘If we combine saffron and strawberry essence we’ll get the colour we want for the tower,’ Alice suggested. ‘It’s simple chemistry.’

  ‘You take care of colours, Alice, just leave the taste to me,’ Laura told her. She was inheriting her mother’s culinary skills, though less for pastries and pies than for more eccentric combinations. ‘I think I’ll roast these walnuts we’re going to use for fungus on the roof.’

  Robert swept into the kitchen and helped himself to a leg of chicken and a lump of Cheddar from the fridge.

  ‘Greedy-guts,’ said Alice.

  Robert glanced at what they were doing. ‘What a pair of babies,’ he growled. ‘It’s about time you two grew up.’

  ‘Oh, yeh?’ said Laura. ‘Who’s been dropped another year in maths, Mr Mature? Everyone’s heard about it.’

  ‘Piss off,’ Robert told her as he made to leave.

  ‘You’re thick,’ she told him.

  Robert turned round. Alice saw his hands knuckle into fists.

  ‘She didn’t mean it!’ Alice said. ‘Did you, Laura?’

  ‘It’s all right, Ali,’ Laura assured her with a note of impatience in her voice. ‘I can look after myself.’

  ‘I’m not bloody stupid,’ Robert told Laura through clenched teeth.

  ‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘Challenge you to a game of chess.’ Robert’s face greyed. Laura turned to Alice. ‘He doesn’t even know how to play it,’ she told her with a sneer.

  ‘’Course I do,’ Robert countered. ‘Anyone can play that stupid game.’

  ‘Go on, then,’ Laura repeated, ‘play me. And the loser has to stand up in the middle of lunch tomorrow and say in front of everybody that they’re more stupid than the winner.’

  Alice looked nervously at her brother: he glared at Laura through hooded eyes.

  ‘I know where James keeps his set,’ Laura said. ‘And you come too and be judge, Alice. Make sure he doesn’t cheat.’

  They put the board on the floor in Robert’s room. He took his time setting up his pieces, with an air of professional deliberation, sneaking the briefest of glances at where Laura put hers.

  ‘No, Robert,’ Laura said in an antagonistic tone. ‘Queen on her own colour. Go on, you’re white, you start. I might as well give you that much advantage.’

  ‘You be white,’ Robert snapped. ‘You can bloody start if you’re so clever.’

  And so they began. Robert copied Laura for as long as he could, but then she checked him with a bishop and he had to start coming up with moves of his own. He took ages, searching the empty corridors of his memory to determine whether knights moved to the left and then forward or to the right and back. He made a noncommittal move of a quiet pawn and Laura grabbed it from the board.

  ‘En passant,’ she said, and Robert was jolted by panic. How many other things had he forgotten, or not known in the first place? He cursed himself for having accepted this challenge. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand it was being called stupid. But he was beginning to admit how stupid he’d been to let himself be put in this position.

  He was also falling prey to the chess player’s fear that his opponent is reading his mind. Laura sat cross-legged with a smug, feline expression on her face, and she made her moves as soon as Robert had taken his fingers off his piece, which made him take even longer the next time.

  Neither of them took much notice when Alice woke up from a doze, said, ‘Back in a minute,’ and slipped out of the room and off down the stairs.

  Laura became complacent: so impetuous was her game that she was bound to make a mistake, and she was a piece down for some time. But she was soon on the attack again, pinning Robert’s pieces into an ever more constricting corner of the board. Robert tried to concentrate on his defence, but he was distracted by nausea at the fear of losing, and by a hatred of his opponent that churned in the pit of his stomach.

  James finally finished his roll of film in the rose garden, with a centipede twisting up a stalk. ‘I’m going in now,’ he called to Alfred.

  ‘See you,’ the old man replied, without looking up. ‘I see seas of green,’ he sang to himself, ‘skies of blue, and we all say, I love you.’

  James got a glass of milk to take with him to the darkroom.

  ‘That looks good,’ he told Alice, who’d returned to her culinary castle on the kitchen table.

  ‘Wait till you taste it,’ she said. ‘Laura’s an amazing cook, James. It must be heredity.’

  ‘Where is she? Have you seen her?’

  ‘Laura? No,’ Alice shook her head. ‘Oh, yes, wait a minute. She’s playing chess.’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ James smiled at his absent-minded sister. ‘I’ve been outside for hours.’

  ‘I know she’s not playing with you, silly,’ Alice told him. ‘She’s playing with Robert.’

  ‘Robert? Don’t be— Where?’

  ‘In his room.’

  James set off. Alice called after him: ‘James?’

  He stopped in the doorway. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t be upset, James. I don’t think he’s very good.’

  James clumped up the stairs, and halfway up the last flight from the second-floor landing to the third floor. But then stopped. He could see through the banisters into Robert’s room, and he stared at Laura sitting cross-legged playing chess with Robert, who sat with one leg tucked under him and the other stretched out across the carpet. James’ first impulse was to march in and grab his board and chess set that Laura had taken without his permission: how could she have done that? To pla
y with Robert, of all people? But instead James silently raised his camera to his right eye, and zoomed in.

  No matter how hard he concentrated, Robert couldn’t see more than one move ahead before his brain dissolved into meaningless blurred shapes, and he had to start again. Until, that is, he left an unguarded rook that Laura nonchalantly picked off as if she were flicking a fly from her cheek. And then all of a sudden Robert saw clearly the next three moves, which led to an inevitable checkmate.

  Maybe, though, Laura hadn’t yet realized. Just maybe. Robert let out a groan.

  ‘Cramp!’ he gasped, and unbent his left leg from under him. ‘Shit!’ he exclaimed, as he accidentally kicked the board, sending the pieces scattering across the carpet. He lay outstretched, massaging his left thigh. ‘Agh, damn, that’s better,’ Robert sighed.

  Laura stared at him for a few seconds. ‘Why, you bloody cheat!’ she exploded. ‘You bloody horrible cheat!’

  That’s right, James thought. That is not fair. But what did you expect?

  ‘It was an accident,’ Robert replied. ‘Shit, you might sympathize, you cow. Cramp bloody hurts.’

  Laura unknotted her crossed legs and moved forward on her knees to Robert’s prone body. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘You’re the loser, Robert. You can’t get out of it like that.’

  ‘I couldn’t help it,’ he claimed. ‘I didn’t want to, I was just getting into it. I had a tactic all planned you hadn’t seen.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Laura spat. ‘I had you mate in three.’ She knelt there, looking down on Robert, eyes blazing with frustration: she knew he was cheating, and she also knew she couldn’t prove it.

  James realized he was a witness; but he wasn’t sure he wanted to intervene.

  ‘I can get you mate in two,’ Robert growled.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Laura demanded.

  Robert lifted his arm to Laura’s breast, and squeezed it through her clothing. James focused the lens on what he was seeing; he couldn’t work out why Laura wasn’t moving.

  ‘Check,’ said Robert, and then he lifted himself up on his elbow and, moving his arm from Laura’s breast to her neck, pulled her down to meet him. As they began to kiss they closed their eyes, and so too did James; he let his body slide down the stairs to the landing below.

  Chapter 4

  WELCOME TO THE ARK

  IT WAS A brisk and blustery autumn afternoon. Laura and Alice, home from school, were warming themselves with mugs of tea and hot buttered muffins in the kitchen. Edna rolled pastry on the table. Laura took a mouthful of muffin and raised her head.

  ‘Look!’ she gasped, scattering crumbs from her lips. ‘Through the window. Look, Mum! It’s snowing!’

  Edna and Alice looked up and gazed at a swirling shower – not of snowflakes, but white and yellow rose petals. A multitude of them flurried past the window, and then were gone. Edna wiped her hands on her apron and took it off.

  ‘Where are you going, Auntie?’ Alice asked her, but Edna was already out in the back hallway pulling on her coat. The girls followed. Outside the back door Edna found Alfred’s sandwiches and thermos untouched in the box where she’d put them for him that morning.

  The girls braced themselves as they scurried after Edna, but as they came out of the back yard the wind dropped. They turned the corner of the house and saw the rose garden: every bush had lost its petals; each one was naked and frail. In the middle of them stood Robert, his school satchel (containing more tools than books) strung behind his back, staring at the ground. He turned when he heard Edna trotting towards him.

  ‘I had a premonition,’ he said.

  Laura and Alice came around the back of Robert and Edna and found Alfred lying on his back, half-submerged in rose petals. There were some on his face too but it was possible to make out, in his fixed gaze and his downturned lips, an expression of intense disappointment.

  After some moments Edna said: ‘I’m going to call the doctor.’ She rushed back towards the house, forgetting the children behind her.

  Robert turned to Laura. ‘Touch him,’ he said. ‘He’s as cold as stone.’

  James was in hospital when Alfred died, having removed from his hips the metal pins and plates which he was given and brought home in a small cardboard box.

  At school, having scraped through O-levels, James enrolled for A-levels in history, physics and art, an absurd combination of subjects he chose ignoring all advice, and which he was able to select owing to a quirk of the syllabus by which none of the lessons interfered with each other.

  ‘What the hell have any of them got to do with each other? Or with anything else, for that matter?’ Charles demanded. ‘You can do economics and business studies at your school, damn it.’

  ‘These are the subjects I’m interested in,’ James whispered, standing his ground.

  ‘Well, it’s your funeral, boy. As long as you don’t expect me to subsidize you through college as well.’

  ‘I don’t, father,’ James muttered, and limped away.

  One pupil who was taking both economics and business studies was Harry Singh. He’d given up cricket to concentrate on his studies, which slightly worried his father, who wanted him, rather than his younger brother, Anil, to take over the shop; but Harry had other plans.

  Harry regarded his father behind the post office counter, with his bruised eyes and air of weary responsibility, as the latest in a long line of clerks who’d been carrying the weight of the world’s bureaucracy on their shoulders. And the last: from the very beginning Harry had made it clear that he had no intention of accepting such an inheritance. He saw himself as English, and even as a young child had acted as though he were a house guest among his own family, accepting such things as their language, religion and dress as quaint rituals to be tolerated on account of their nostalgia, but nothing to do with him. Food was the only cultural entity Harry was forced to admit a fondness for; he enjoyed cooking with his father on a Saturday evening, and copied his habit of chewing cardamom seeds during the day. Apart from that aberration, though, Harry saw himself as having somehow been billeted with these unfortunate people, less for his own good than to help them survive in the mother culture.

  Harry had entered primary school with a complete command of the English language, something which had proved beyond his mother, who took him to the shop or doctor’s surgery to act as her interpreter. His grandmother sat in a chair in the flat above the shop berating her family for bringing her to this land of drizzle and rickets, all grey, without colour, which she couldn’t see anyway because of cataracts caused, no doubt, by the winter snow, and she watched television all day.

  Harry knew he didn’t fit in with them. You couldn’t move across the world and pretend you were still at home. You had to plunge into the world you lived in; you had to assimilate. Not that this was anything other than a steady rationalization of his own taste and temperament: Harry felt at ease in the world he grew up in; it was only inside his own home that he felt out of place.

  Although they took quite different subjects, Harry told James that he too was interested in photography, and James invited Harry to join him in his darkroom. James enjoyed having a companion, even if Harry was a somewhat inattentive colleague: his professed interest was hard to discern, as James explained what quantities of chemicals to mix and how to avoid scratches on the neg. They had long coffee breaks, and found how much they both looked forward to leaving home, swapping stories of their stifling home lives; although Harry didn’t admit that despite their apparent agreement James’ wishes made no sense to him at all. Why would anyone want to leave a house like this? It was exactly the kind of place he wanted to escape to.

  Neither did James fully realize that Harry was bored stiff in the darkroom. He only enjoyed the journey through the house towards it, and afterwards away from it: for he walked slowly, peering into the rooms; and sometimes he was rewarded with a glimpse of Alice. He paused, breathless, in her doorway, waiting in vain for Alice to notice him too,
until James turned to see where his companion had got to and Harry rushed to catch up.

  Lewis, too, was taking entirely different subjects from James, and their friendship ebbed a little further. There were always people around Lewis, and James didn’t want to be one of a crowd.

  ‘You want to come out on Friday night, Jay?’ Lewis invited him. ‘A bunch of us are going to the Cave.’

  ‘No, thanks, Lewis,’ James whispered. ‘I can’t dance,’ he shrugged.

  ‘Neither can I,’ Lewis laughed. ‘I’ll be helping out the DJ, racking up the records and that. You won’t catch me on the dance floor. Come on, Jay, you’ll like it, there’s always Spanish girls there on a Friday.’

  James looked at his feet. ‘Thanks, Lew. I’ll see, OK?’ he whispered unconvincingly.

  Lewis never asked James to come to the school team’s football matches. A part of him knew how difficult it would be for James to watch what he’d loved but couldn’t join in with any more, but another part figured that James might want to come and support them anyway, and he resented James’ withdrawal.

  ‘You’ve always been a dreamer, Jay, but at least you used to share them,’ he told him.

  James dreamed through the rest of his school days. History turned out to be a hoax: the past bore no relation to the present. Instead of getting some hints at least of where he fitted in the scheme of things, as he’d hoped, the subject was merely a grinding struggle for James to remember the names and dates of kings and queens and other rulers of Britain, who were shadows of real people. And apart from a brief period studying the properties of light and its perception by the human eye James found physics a frustrating combination of the banal and the impenetrably abstract. He watched, surprised, as boys and girls he’d considered less intelligent than himself showed an easy grasp of the increasingly complex concepts of science with which they were presented – as if their brains were expanding and his was not.

  He took refuge in art, and although he couldn’t draw, paint or sculpt as well as other pupils, when he turned every project into a photographic one his teacher, far from marking him down, as he feared, encouraged him instead.