The Old Boys

by William Trevor

  ‘You would find it less expensive, your food and lodging no longer a draw on your purse.’

  ‘I could not.’ Having said it, Basil sought round for a reason.

  ‘Oh come, it is not like you to be proud. It is your due. We are your parents. He owns the house and it shall pass to you when we die.’

  ‘I could not bring the birds here.’

  ‘Why not? We can take to the birds as well as other people. We would soon grow used to their chirping.’

  ‘It is not so simple.’

  ‘I have had to accept a cat that is little short of a monster. What are a few birds in comparison?’

  ‘It is the cat I fear. Cats and birds do not see eye to eye.’

  ‘You are afraid Monmouth would injure your budgerigars, is that it? Monmouth is old, he has not long to live. Without a cat about the place you would think differently?’

  ‘Oh yes. My birds are quite valuable. After all, they are my livelihood. I cannot take risks.’

  Basil left, and Mr Jaraby, his watering completed, returned to the sitting-room. ‘So that is our son,’ he exclaimed, easing himself into an armchair. She did not reply. She felt in no mood for conversation.

  ‘Come, puss,’ Mr Jaraby said. ‘I shall talk to you. What did you think of our Basil? Ah, old Monmouth, you are the only comfort this old man has left. We age together, my cat and I. Are we not two of a kind? Plagued and tormented by the cold nature of a woman. Ah, you are purring. You do not purr often, my cat, and I not at all. How good it is that you are happy on your master’s knee at the end of this trying afternoon. Your master is almost happy too, for he has one loyal friend –’

  ‘Such slop!’ cried Mrs Jaraby. The simplest thing, she reflected, would be to do away with the cat. Although it would have suited her better to do away with them both.

  Basil, his head aching, walked slowly from the bus-stop to his room. The outing had rather tired him. ‘You remember that letter, boy?’ his father had said jovially. ‘The porridge behind the radiators? How important it all seemed then! How serious and black-browed we were! You scarcely spoke all holidays. I remember being quite stern.’ Basil remembered other things: putting his father’s bicycle-clips down the lavatory, giving his father’s ties to a tramp, collecting slugs, putting earth beneath the cushions of an armchair, smoking paper and trying to smoke coal in an old pipe. One of the first things Basil could remember was eating a rasher of bacon, raw. He remembered the feeling that led to it: the instinct that it was something he should not do, and was not meant to do, although no one had actually forbidden it. He hid it in his pillow-slip and ate it when the lights were put out. He persevered, although the taste was nasty; he wept over it, his stomach turned and heaved, and as he swallowed the rind he was sick all over the bedclothes. At school Basil had done these private things too: he had taken five shillings out of Martindale’s jacket pocket; he had torn all the centre pages out of Treece’s Durell and Fawdry; once while ill in the sanatorium he had left his bed late at night and watched one of the maids undressing through a chink in the curtains; he had followed Rodd major and Turnbill with binoculars.

  Such memories, begun by his father’s reminiscing, streamed through Basil’s aching head as he covered the ground to his room and his birds. He wished he had not gone to tea: this upset to his routine was something he could not take in his stride. His mind would play on it, and these images from the past would annoy him far into the night. They were all too close to the surface, too easily accessible to be taken risks with. He should have foreseen it, he should have remembered his father’s penchant for the past and guessed that by going to the house at all he was playing with fire. He sighed, giving seed to his birds and cleaning their trays to occupy himself. He wished there was somewhere to go or someone else who might talk to him. He cooked a tin of beans and wrote briefly to A. J. Hohenberg.

  Dear Mr Hohenberg, Thank you for yours of Monday. All goes well with me and mine, although I am a trifle concerned about the chick I bought in Norwich in January. He has grown fast and has a good voice but still seems cramped in movement. He is beginning to moult and appears feverish – could this be psittacosis? Do you know the symptoms? If it is, can you suggest a treatment? Naturally, after the experience I had with Rubie some months ago, I do not wish to embark on anything drastic, but would be grateful for a certain and safe cure. My hopes that the little one might turn out to be pink have been brutally dashed. He has grown as blue as the sky and I shall dispose of him soon, for I feel one should not have to live with a broken promise. Sincerely yours, B. Jaraby. P.S. I hope all is well with you.

  Later that evening Mr and Mrs Jaraby spoke again.

  ‘It is not that I cannot hear the sound,’ he said. ‘There is no sound to hear the way you have regulated the set. You sit there knitting and watching the actors mouth without speech.’

  ‘It is more amusing. One can study the acting and make the most of faces.’

  ‘My God!’

  They had married when they were quite young. Then she had been more humble, coming from a family in which humility in children and honour shown to parents were golden rules. It was only quite recently that the humility had worn away; only recently that she had ceased to please and ceased to make allowances. She went her own way now, angering him as frequently as she could: by purchasing Australian food, which he forbade in the house because he had a prejudice against that country; by refusing to cooperate in the matter of the fruit and vegetables; by failing to place water on the table at mealtimes, although she had unconsciously done so all their married life; by stirring up trouble with Basil where none need be; by inviting him to tea and threatening that he should again live in the house; by mocking his cat and his affection for it.

  Mr Jaraby did not wish to devote this large proportion of his time to a consideration of his wife. He had his work on the committee to do, letters to write, ideas to develop. Even now he should be lobbying his fellow committee members to ensure, to make absolutely certain, that the way was clear for his presidency. He should be thinking about Nox and judging what it was that Nox had in his mind and how, when the time came, Nox would jump. Yet his wife’s attitude sapped his time – having her always about him was like being ill. He would have to do his lobbying at the School on Old Boys’ Day. He would speak to them one by one, extracting where possible a definite promise of support. ‘Ground has been lost,’ he said to himself, but when he mulled over the situation a little longer he reckoned he would easily recover it. He turned a knob on the television set. Dialect voices filled the room.

  9

  ‘Pardon me, sir,’ cried the woman, jostling Mr Jaraby at the counter in Woolworth’s. ‘Have I damaged you? I was rudely pushed.’

  ‘No damage done. There is a rough crowd here on Saturdays.’ He proceeded on his way, but the woman pursued him, brushing his jacket and holding on to his arm. ‘One longs for more elegant times,’ she cried, smiling at him, not anxious to let him go. ‘Do you live in these parts?’

  Mr Jaraby, startled by the woman’s directness, replied that he did. She fell into step with him. ‘It is a pleasant neighbourhood, though not at all what it used to be. You have seen changes? Have you lived here always?’

  ‘Well, yes, I have –’

  ‘How nice to get to know a neighbourhood so well! How nice to feel a native!’

  When Mr Jaraby entered the greengrocer’s he found the woman still at his side. He spoke to her of the vegetables and made recommendations, assuming she was there to buy. But when his order was completed, when the assistant turned to her, she said: ‘No, no. I am with this gentleman.’

  ‘I have forgotten your name. Forgive me. Have we met before?’

  ‘We met just now in Woolworth’s. Shall we meet again?’

  Mr Jaraby, finding the woman a nuisance, raised his hat and crossed the street, leaving her safely trapped by traffic on the other pavement. But when he sat down for a cup of tea in the Cadena she was there again, begging permission to
share his table. ‘Meringues!’ the woman cried. ‘Shall we gorge ourselves on meringues today?’

  ‘I have already ordered a bun. But by all means take meringues yourself.’

  ‘I must watch my figure, but having met you I shall go on the spree with meringues. You are not overweight. Well-built but without surplus.’

  Mr Jaraby did not speak. The woman continued:

  ‘I have trouble with liver. It leads to plumpness. I have injections for it.’

  Mr Jaraby did not reply. He felt embarrassed, sitting in a café with a stranger who spoke about her liver. The waitress brought his tea and he lengthened the process of pouring it and buttering his bun. He had no newspaper to read. He tried to look over the woman’s shoulder.

  ‘Meringues,’ she said to the waitress. ‘I am having a fling! The heat,’ she continued across the table – ‘isn’t it terrible? It is no weather for a plump girl, I can tell you. I sleep quite naked, with only a sheet these nights and the window thrown up.’

  ‘It is oppressive, certainly.’

  ‘I can see you are a gentleman. Do you mind my saying it? I love a gentleman. My secret is I fancy men who are no longer young. Wise with years, but young in their ways. I think I see you are young in your ways.’

  ‘I am seventy-two. My age shows and often I feel it. My wife is a year older and quite out of control.’

  ‘Ah, I do not care for wives! I am naughty about that. Tell me now, is your wife as plump as I am?’

  ‘Well, no. My wife is like a skeleton. A bag of bones.’

  ‘Perhaps you prefer the skinnier woman, eh? Am I not your sort? I can make arrangements –’

  ‘Excuse me, please. I would prefer not to talk like this.’

  ‘You are shy, dear man! Come on now, if you would like me to make arrangements –’

  ‘Arrangements? Arrangements? Madam, you have the advantage of me. I am at a loss –’

  ‘I have friends who are attractively thin. No tummy at all. Upright like sticks, no –’

  ‘Are you confusing me with someone else? I cannot continue this conversation.’

  ‘Or younger ones. Thin or fat. One of them trained for the trapeze. Another a mass of muscle, she used to be a gym teacher. Bus conductresses in uniform. Canadians and Chinese. Girls in kilts or macintosh coats. Lady disciplinarians. Girls come back from the Israeli Army. Blacks and old grannies. Ex-nuns. Judo girls. Greeks.’

  She was as crazy as his wife. The world was full of wretched women. Did his wife, he wondered, behave like this, talking madly to strangers when his back was turned?

  ‘Shall we meet again?’ the woman cried, but he was moving fast to the pay-desk. She shrugged her shoulders and pulled a face at Swingler, who was sitting a table or two away.

  Outside, Mr Jaraby noticed a young constable on the beat and considered for a moment reporting the matter to him. He decided against it, for it would take so long to explain; the policeman would be stupid; he would be asked to go to the police station; he would be asked if he wished to bring charges. Mr Jaraby knew this, because often before he had made complaints to the police, though never a complaint as bizarre as this one. He found the police obstructive and politely impertinent. He had once had cause to take part in a long correspondence with a Chief Constable concerning the impudence of a desk-sergeant. He did not wish to go through all that again. Yet he was conscious of a mounting anger against the woman. That broad, hideous face, coloured like a parrot, ill-fitting teeth dangling in its mouth, the whiff of perspiration, the awful, endless chatter of nonsense. Dowse had given him, man to man, the address of a safe house which boasted an exclusively public school clientele. Dowse had told him about disease, about young men fresh at the University getting themselves into a mess. He had quoted histories, spoken of the terror in a young man’s mind that led so often to total decadence or suicide. Dowse it was who had given him, though on another occasion, the address of a good tailor and had recommended a barber’s shop in Jermyn Street. Dowse would have made a man of Basil, no doubt of it. It was odd how these things were: how influenced and – yes, the word was right – how inspired one might be at a certain age. The formative years. Dowse stood no nonsense. Fight fairly, squarely, have nothing to hide, indulge in no shame: the words might aptly have been inscribed on his gravestone. And with the thought of his gravestone he remembered the roar of the hymn in Chapel that had marked his passing, and the silence that followed it. With Dowse as his master, Basil today would not be training a circus of birds in a hovel of a house somewhere. There would not be this estrangement in the family, with Basil a bone of contention between man and wife. Well, estrangement there was and so it should remain. Polite Sunday teas were one thing; Basil beneath his feet all day, birds fluttering through the house – that was another matter, and one which he did not intend to tolerate. How dare she think along such lines! What was there to be gained, from anyone’s point of view, by a son returning at this late stage to live like a child with his parents? Did she wish to wash his hair and bathe him, to buy him Meccano sets, to send him spruced and combed to Christmas parties?

  How few people there were in the world, Mr Jaraby reflected, who were equipped to weather it and remain intact and sane. What pricks in the flesh one endured: one’s wife, one’s son, a crumpled cripple like Nox, this woman who leeched on to him. Dowse had said Nox was a trouble-maker. ‘He plays no games, Jaraby. He shows no enthusiasm. The strictest surveillance for that boy, Jaraby. The task may not be to your liking, but we are all together in the House, we have a duty one to another.’ He had failed with Nox; he had tried and he had failed. Nox today was scarcely a creature to be proud of. Could one say without flinching that one had been an influence in his formative years? Yet his instruction from Dowse had been that he should be. ‘These are important years, Jaraby. The man is made, his standards are set. See that you leave your mark on Nox, as you leave it on others. I know you well, Jaraby. I trust that mark.’ Mr Jaraby laughed. One could certainly not be proud of the absurd Nox.

  His steps had led him away from the shops and the crowds into a leafy suburban road not unlike his own. He entered a house that was marked with a brass plate, consulting his watch to check his punctuality.

  Dr Wiley, who was elderly too, was dressed in an old-fashioned manner. The knot of his tie was noticeably large and had not been pulled into the familiar position on the collar. It left a gap of an inch or so, in which a brass stud featured prominently. In combination with his wing collar and the cut of his waistcoat the stud contrived to suggest a tail-coat, although in fact Dr Wiley was not wearing one. Mr Jaraby came straight to the point.

  ‘She is far from herself, Doctor. She rambles in her speech and makes no sense.’

  Dr Wiley played with a magnifying glass on his desk, holding it over random sections of print. He liked to have something in his hands when he was giving a consultation. He came straight to the point too.

  ‘Is she fit physically?’

  ‘It appears so. She seems strong as a horse. She can lift things and do a day’s work.’

  ‘Ah. She must not lift things too much. Nor do too strenuous a day’s work. She is no longer young. We forget how taxed the body becomes simply by living a long time. See that she does not overwork. Get her to put her feet up.’

  ‘That is not the trouble. She talks of having our son to live with us; she has had him to tea.’

  ‘An extra person in the house certainly means extra work. Does she have help?’

  ‘A woman comes. It is wild, irresponsible talk that worries me more.’

  ‘Can you be specific? What kind of things –’

  ‘My dear man, I’m telling you. Our son, she says, is to come to live in Crimea Road. In his old room which she has prepared. He will bring his birds.’

  ‘Now, Mr Jaraby, that does not sound wild. Your wife feels she would like to see more of her son. It is natural for loneliness to creep in at this age. Be a companion to her more, if you can. Do you ever go together to the cin
ema?’

  ‘Go to –? Heavens above, what good would going to a cinema do? You cannot cure madness in a cinema.’

  ‘But is there madness to cure? You have given me no evidence of it.’

  ‘We had cut our son off. We had not seen him, nor cared to see him for fifteen years. Well, I think she occasionally called on him – but at least he never came to the house. He was not welcome, he was not invited.’

  ‘And Mrs Jaraby thinks of a reconciliation. That is very natural. It is quite normal and in order –’

  ‘My son, Dr Wiley, is a near-criminal. He has been in trouble. We do not discuss it. Basil is a great disappointment to us.’

  ‘To you. Maybe not to your wife.’

  ‘Oh, rubbish. You know nothing of it. You are speaking outside your province.’

  ‘I am attempting to help you. You came for advice.’

  ‘That is not true. I came for pills or tablets to calm my wife. You are deliberately obtuse.’

  ‘Come, come, Mr Jaraby, let us keep our tempers.’

  ‘Let us keep to our proper places and not overstep the line. I repeat, Dr Wiley, Basil is a near-criminal.’

  ‘Be that as it may, I cannot prescribe for your wife –’

  ‘Oh my God! Great God in heaven, why cannot this said case –’

  ‘If you shout, Mr Jaraby, I shall ask you to leave.’

  ‘I am not shouting. You are not listening to me. Are you refusing to treat my wife?’

  ‘Certainly not. Mrs Jaraby is my patient. I will call and talk to her, examine her if necessary.’

  ‘What good will that do? This is really too much. I have had a trying day. My wife goes on. People annoy me on the street. Yesterday there was the strain of Basil in the house again. I make a simple request; a good doctor would instantly accede to it. It is useless to talk to her. She will consent to nothing.’

  ‘If you consider that I am a bad doctor you are at liberty to have another. I remain your wife’s, though. Is it your wish that I visit her?’

  ‘No, it is certainly not my wish. I never suggested it. When did I ask you to visit her? What are you talking about?’