The Insect Farm

by Stuart Prebble

  “Jonathan!” The sound came not from Brendan but from Harriet, who was jammed behind the driver’s seat on the other side of the vehicle, with Martin between her and the fight. “Stop it. Stop it. For heaven’s sake!” I looked across at her, expecting to see surprise or shock on her face, but what I saw was instantly recognizable as fear. It was an expression I had never seen before and it stopped me a split second before my punch would have crashed into Brendan’s face.

  Brendan himself had made no attempt to resist or to fight back, and the moment I loosened my grip he slumped back in his seat. Immediately his hand went to his collar, pulling at the place where the pressure had been. Already a red line was visible on his neck. We all remained where we were for a few moments, and gradually I felt control beginning to return. I was shocked by the violence of my own reaction, but even more so at the look of horror I had seen from Harriet. A second later and my thoughts returned to Roger and whether he would be freaked out by the incident. I took a step to my left so that I would be able to see him through the window of the passenger door. In total contrast to Harriet and the rest of us, his face and demeanour indicated nothing amiss. He seemed to be completely unperturbed, or even unaware of what had happened.

  Straight away I knew that I should apologize, and that probably I eventually would, but at the moment I was unable to calm down sufficiently to do so. I reached for the handle, and was about to slide the door closed, when I caught a split second flash of an expression on Brendan’s face which I had not expected: maybe it was one of triumph. Quickly he looked away, and I pushed the door closed, walking very slowly around the back of the van as I struggled to collect myself. Harriet did not look at me as I passed her window and got back into the driver’s seat. I started the engine and drove two or three miles in silence before anyone spoke.

  “I don’t know, Jonathan.” Martin’s words were spoken in the most conciliatory tone he could summon. He and I were closer to being mates than I would or could ever be with Brendan, so telling him to fuck off and punching his lights out wasn’t such a tempting option. “However you look at it, it was a bit weird.” Obviously he was trying to work this out as he spoke. “I’m not worried about us or whether anyone had any kind of an issue with the quartet. Just curious, really. It was like he was giving the Sermon on the Mount… what do you think he was talking about?”

  “Well, we could always ask him.” It was Harriet speaking, and I was immensely relieved that she had calmed down sufficiently to resume the conversation. “In case none of you has noticed, Roger is sitting right there in front of us.”

  “So how about it, Roger?” I half-turned to him as I continued to drive through the city. My brother was looking out of the window to his left, showing no sign of being aware of the conversation or that it had anything to do with him. Sometimes he was like this, mostly when he was tired. He just sort of checked out, much as I sometimes do myself, but in a way which seemed more impenetrable. Usually I would be content to leave him alone, but I had more or less calmed down by now, and the truth is that I was only a little less curious than everyone else in the van. “Roger? Are you with us?”

  Slowly he turned his head to me, as though waking from a light sleep.

  “Oh hi, Jonathan,” he said. “What’s happening?”

  “Are you OK?”

  “Sure, yes, I’m fine thanks. Why do you ask?”

  “I was just wondering if you enjoyed the party?” For a moment I thought he was going to say “What party?” – but he didn’t, and I continued. “You seemed to be having a great time. You seem to have made yourself the centre of everyone’s attention.”

  Roger looked back at me with one of those looks of his which I knew well. His face was completely passive, giving no trace or hint of what he was thinking. It was one of the many features of Roger’s condition which no doctor had ever been able to explain: an apparent capacity completely to blank out incidents he did not wish to remember. They did not need to be anything traumatic, but could include relatively benign occurrences such as what had happened at the party. In such cases, his reaction to questions would be just exactly as though they had not been asked, so that it was impossible to tell whether he had completely failed to comprehend, or was simply choosing not to reply. This seemed to be just one of those occasions.

  I turned to look at him again and saw his face glowing against the yellow light from the streetlamps. I noticed a little cobweb of wrinkles around the corners of his eyes, the very early signs of loss of the elasticity of youthful skin. Suddenly he seemed much older to me. An odd look in his eyes, or something in his expression, suggested that he had learnt something, or had acquired some wisdom which was unavailable to the rest of us.

  My imagination was going into overdrive, but I also knew that I was not going to be able to get Roger to open up any more. All I wanted to do was to drop everyone off and get home. No one mentioned my loss of temper, and nothing more was said other than the routine stuff which is necessary at times like these: “You played well”, “So did you”, “David Frost was nice, wasn’t he?” When the door slammed and Roger, Harriet and I were left alone, we were all too tired to pick up the threads.

  Later that evening I went into Roger’s bedroom as usual to say goodnight to him. He was in bed with his head sideways on the pillow and the bedclothes tucked up tightly under his chin. Any sign of growing maturity had vanished in the half-light, and his eyes were drooping like a kid struggling but losing the battle to stay awake. These were the times when I loved Roger the most. I didn’t usually do this, but on that evening for some reason I kissed him on the forehead and said goodnight.

  “Jonathan,” he murmured as I was about to close the door.

  “Yes, Roger, what is it?”

  “How old was Dad when he died?”

  The question came from so far out of the blue that I had to think for a minute before answering.

  “I think he was fifty-seven, Roger. Why do you ask?”

  “And how old are you now?”

  “I’m twenty-two, Roger. But why are you asking?”

  “OK,” he said, “that’s fine then. We’ve still got plenty of time.”

  “Time for what?” I asked him, but when I looked again he had gone to sleep.

  I was never able to get anything resembling an answer from Roger about what he meant. Indeed, by the following morning, after a night in which I had little sleep as I turned the matter over in my mind, Roger didn’t even seem to remember it. When I asked him, he gave me one of that same repertoire of blank looks. The one that seems to imply that I am just a little bit crazy.

  Chapter Fourteen

  We were all still very young in those days, and were changing fast, just as the world was changing around us. Where once I had seen her every day and slept with her every night, I felt in some ways that I was losing track of the person Harriet was and was becoming. She had always dressed to surprise, for example, but these days when I saw her for the first time after a period of absence, the surprise was not always what I might have hoped.

  Her outfits, which had once been entirely carefree and looked as though they had been compiled with abandon and joie de vivre, now seemed to have been put together with more studied eccentricity. One weekend she arrived off the train wearing a man’s suit – the real thing, which she had actually bought from a men’s outfitters. The jacket was chalk-striped and double-breasted: the trousers seemed too big and were tied tightly with a belt, with turn-ups spilling over brown-and-white brogues. I had not known what to say, and she struggled to suppress her irritation that I could not immediately enthuse.

  We had a slightly stilted version of our usual first evening together, and on the following day we were sitting at the table having eaten lunch. I had made my special dish of lamb chops with lots of mint sauce out of a jar, peas out of a tin and mashed potatoes. Tinned peas were just inside what would have been acceptable in my mother’s household, but if I had made instant mashed potatoes I would hav
e been able to hear and feel the sound of her turning in her grave. We had opened a bottle of wine, but I noticed that Harriet seemed to be drinking far less than I was. Possibly I was just a little bit drunk.

  “When will you start looking for a job for after graduation?”

  “The careers advisers are saying that the BBC does an annual trawl to recruit for its orchestras,” Harriet said. She was putting away the cutlery into a drawer lined with gingham Fablon. “I think that starts early in the new year, and they say that maybe I’ve got an outside chance of getting that, which would be great. And as soon as I know a precise date when the exams finish and I can be back in London, I will be in with a better chance of getting some session work. Playing background music for feature films or on recordings, that sort of stuff.”

  “That sounds fantastic. Really fun.” I had to take a moment to measure my tone when I spoke the words I wanted to say next. I know that by now I was feeling the effects of the wine, and so I probably got it wrong. “So you don’t see any future for the quartet then?”

  “Why do you say that?” Her reaction was of someone being accused of something.

  “No reason. It’s just that you listed a few options, and continuing in the quartet wasn’t one of them.”

  “Well, it wasn’t one of them because I can’t easily see how we can make a full-time living playing Vivaldi at twenty-first birthdays and weddings. But I feel fairly certain that all of us would want to supplement what we can earn during the day with whatever gigs we can get in the evenings.”

  Strange how sometimes we can feel ourselves wading into ever-deeper water, but instead of making for higher ground, we continue until we are up to our necks.

  “So you’ve discussed it then?”

  “Discussed what?”

  “With Martin and Jed and Brendan. You’ve had a talk together and made your plans for the future of the quartet after you all graduate.”

  Whatever else she was, Harriet wasn’t stupid. She could see where this was going, and her sigh of impatience was overlaid with a tinge of anger which should have sent the danger signs. Indeed, I think they did send the danger signs, but at that moment I was wearing eyeshades.

  “So you are getting ready to be offended that I have talked about the future with them before I have talked about the future with you. Is that it?”

  “I didn’t say that. But since you mention it…”

  Harriet threw down the damp tea towel, intending it to land on the edge of the draining board, but instead it fell to the floor, further adding to her irritation. Ignoring it, she perched her lovely bottom on the edge of the kitchen table and folded her arms.

  “We haven’t sat down and planned the future. In the normal course of conversation, when everyone has talked about what they want to do next, it’s natural that people have said whether they think they would be available if the quartet were to continue. If one of us was going abroad, or going into a different line of work altogether, the other three would have to give up, or try to find a replacement. It’s just chat, that’s all.”

  “Thank you for explaining.” I picked up the tea towel and threw it in the corner where the laundry basket should have been. “It’s good to know. And so do I assume that all of them are coming back to live in London, and that all of them anticipate being available on evenings and weekends for bar mitzvahs and funerals?”

  “Yes,” she said, still not moving and more or less challenging me to a “What do you want to make of it?”

  “Excellent.” I was like a blind man stumbling through a minefield. I took a long drink from my wineglass and then refilled it. “So we’re going to have the marvellous red-headed wonder as part of the next phase of our lives as well. Having endured the last five years in which Brendan fucking Harcourt has lusted after you like a puppy on heat, I’ll have many more years to look forward to evenings where you are out late, wearing sexy outfits, with two blokes who fancy you and one who has never made any secret that he has the total hots for you. And I’ll sit at home like a good wife waiting for you to turn the key in the latch.”

  The look on Harriet’s face suggested that she was struggling for the right way of expressing what she had in her mind, but after a few seconds she definitely found it.

  “Fuck you.”

  I don’t know what had come over me, and I guess that Harriet’s response was exactly what I could have anticipated and probably deserved. By now the water was lapping around my chin, but I was still wading in.

  “Why so? What is it about what I have said that doesn’t ring true?”

  “Because, you fucking idiot,” she said, or rather she didn’t say, because by now she was shouting at close to the capacity of her lungs, “because I am the total ass who heads off home when everyone else is going for a nightcap. I am the idiot who says no every time someone asks me to go for a drink after the gig. I am the complete fool who has remained faithful to you, in mind, body and spirit, in sickness and in health, ever since we met as relatively young kids. And all I get is suspicion, bollocks and patronizing and snide remarks for my trouble. So” – and now she stood up straight and headed for the door, only looking over her shoulder as she disappeared – “fuck you, fuck you, and one more thing,” she said, tossing her hair dramatically. “Fuck you.”

  The funny thing about saying something in anger is that once it has been said, it cannot be unsaid. The second it’s floating in the ether, it’s there for ever. Hanging there, like a sword. As soon as I saw and heard the vehemence of Harriet’s reaction to what I had said, it had the effect of instantly sobering me up, and I knew that I had been a complete prat. The picture she painted of living the life of a nun among a bunch of hedonist students had the ring of truth about it. Knowing that I had chosen to look after my brother instead of pursuing my education and the fun that would have accompanied it, Harriet was doing her bit by keeping to a quiet and dignified life. In her own way, she was doing everything possible to remain true to me. She was making a significant personal sacrifice, which I had patently failed to appreciate or be grateful for with my pathetic suspicions.

  “Oh darling…” I said, but it was too late. The front door slammed and she had gone.

  * * *

  It took a while to heal that particular rift, and it was all made much worse because it happened so close to the time when we would have to go back to our separate lives. She was due to set off on the Monday morning, and by the afternoon of the day before I think we had more or less regained our usual harmony, but still the wounds were fresh.

  “I don’t suppose you know yet when you’ll next be able to come down?”

  Harriet smiled half-heartedly. It was a gentle scratch on an open wound, but she seemed keen to pour balm on it.

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to see what the timetable does, and what essay or project commitments I’ll have for the next few weeks. They’ve already warned us that this year is going to be the toughest so far.”

  I was about to remind her that the long, slow train journey provided excellent quiet time for reading and study, but thought better of it and just nodded.

  “Listen,” I said, “I know you’ll do your best. Just remember that we are here to support you. It isn’t easy for you, and the very last thing I want is to be an extra pressure on you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I really appreciate that.”

  “I mean it. I know that I haven’t properly acknowledged that this is all every bit as tough for you as it is for me. And I don’t want to take for granted that you don’t do everything every other student does to have a good time.” Harriet smiled a lovely little half-smile that told me the frost was melting. At that moment her face seemed to me to be the loveliest thing I had ever looked at, and I stepped forward and put my arms around her waist. “It’s only that I love you so much, and if anything ever happened to you I just don’t know what I would do.”

  Instead of looking at me, Harriet pushed her face into my shoulder. After a few seconds
I could feel little convulsions rippling through her body and could tell that she was crying.

  “Hey,” I said. “No need for tears. I just wanted to make sure you know how much you mean to me.”

  She didn’t move, but the trembling continued. After a while I heard her voice, muffled because her face was pushed hard into my jacket.

  “I do know it, Jonathan. I really do.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Over the next few weeks, our lives slipped back into the same familiar routine. Each morning I would wake up at around 7 a.m. and lie in bed collecting my thoughts about the day. I can’t pretend that I thought anything terribly profound in these meanderings. I suppose I wondered what Harriet was doing, what time she would be waking, how she might have slept. These were days when a long-distance telephone call was an event, so it did not occur to me that I could call her to find out. Anyway, this was her final year and Harriet had moved into a university-owned house with three other girls from her department. I never had the opportunity to see it, but I knew that the shared telephone was in a public area, and so our conversations were not completely satisfactory.

  After about ten minutes I would ease myself out of bed, slip on my dressing gown and pad into Roger’s bedroom to wake him. In all the time I had lived with Roger, and indeed in all the years since, I don’t think I ever went into his room in the morning and found him already awake. God, I envied him that. Not that my own sleep patterns were not regular and more or less satisfactory, but Roger just seemed to be able to sleep like a baby.

  What’s more, when gently aroused from the deepest of deep sleeps, Roger always came to life in a way you’d want to wake up yourself. It was like he felt a mix of surprise and pleasure to have woken up at all, coupled with an inbuilt joy at finding himself in such a happy place as the world. A bit like waking up in a strange bed and realizing that you are somewhere lovely on holiday and outside the bright sun is shining and the blue sea is beckoning. That’s what each day seemed to be like for Roger.