The Boy Who Could Keep a Swan in His Head

by John Hunt

  “I’m happy to hear she’s well bolted and bound,” he said. “Now … Mr Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes.”

  Phen knew the book; however, he didn’t want to go there yet. He still had the perfect blend of cinnamon and a rich sweetness in his mouth. Zelda had been true to her word. She’d opened the door to number forty-three and a plate of fresh pancakes immediately greeted them on the kitchen table. They smelled delicious. Next to them lay a green-and-gold tin of Lyle’s syrup.

  He knew the label well. He’d read it like a book many times. The lion lay on its side, bees buzzing around its stomach.

  “Is this going to take long?” Zelda asked with an exaggerated opening of her green eyes.

  The knife was initially a little tentative until she took his hand and made him plunge it deeper into the thick, sticky gold. They then spiralled it up and expertly flicked the blade onto its side. Together they made intricate designs on the flat circles of dough. He loved the way she urged him to have more, to spoil himself. He’d been taught the opposite. Good manners required a guest never to take advantage of the host. In the face of temptation, restraint was the highest honour. He overcame his guilt and had a second pancake while stoically refusing a third.

  “With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicking off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the—”

  “Animal Farm.”

  “To the left, third shelf if I’m not mistaken.”

  Although his father owned thousands of books, Phen noticed his choices were dwindling. Before, there seemed to be hundreds he had to remember, now they were down to twenty or so. Not that it had ever been a real problem for Phen. For all the incorrect wiring in his head, he could remember them, he just couldn’t say or spell them very well. “Stammer away,” his father would say, “I’m not going anywhere and practice makes perfect.” He’d stare at the ceiling in deep concentration while words sputtered and wobbled around the room. When a particularly difficult word finally made it out, he’d breathe deeply and close his eyes for a moment. “Thanks be to the god of vocabulary. Never mind the staggering, you got it over the finishing line.”

  Perhaps Phen’s speech impediment reminded his father of his own life. He’d left England so his sickly mother could find good health in warmer climes. Within days, though, he’d lurched into a burial at sea as the tuberculosis and Atlantic took her. He landed with her hatbox in Cape Town and a determination to get to Johannesburg, the City of Gold. Bright and determined. he talked himself into a job at a stockbroking firm just as duty and the British Empire called. He was initially defeated by and then finally victorious against Rommel. It would take five years for the airman from North Africa to return to his posh leather seat at the Stock Exchange.

  Yet his soul had begun to hem and haw. So much had been seen and experienced it was difficult to squeeze it back into a tiny office even if you had two phones and a secretary. The immigrant stockbroker airman decided he should be a farmer. Opportunity called. The colonial office offered large tracts of farming land for “a bob and sixpence” in Northern Rhodesia. This was the stuff of Kipling: “Take up the White Man’s burden –/ Send forth the best ye breed – / Go, bind your sons to exile / To serve your captives’ need.” But what he’d said about Asia was also true for Africa: “Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.”

  The Wind of Change blew his father back to Johannesburg. All Phen could remember was that the first Pal, a large black ridgeback, had to stay. Although chained to a wheelbarrow, he chased after their truck, it seemed for miles. Sitting on his mother’s lap Phen twisted around and watched the dog keep coming through the red dust. The wheelbarrow bounced behind him, occasionally flipping in the air before being dragged again on its side. Eventually his mother, using two hands, gently turned his head towards the windscreen.

  Maybe a life that’s always stuttering begins to make you sick. All the stopping and starting, the breaking of rhythm, has to take its toll. How many times can you change direction until you have none? What is the opposite of the verb “to flow”? And whatever it is, did it turn the minuscule pinprick in his father’s heart, hidden since childhood, into a hole? By the time he was trying to be a stockbroker for the third time, he was literally running out of air. Although it was his pump that had sprung a leak, it somehow affected his lungs, which produced their own heady mix when accompanied by a migraine.

  In a cunning attempt to smoothen his reading, Phen introduced a new rule. If he saw a word further down the sentence that he knew he would battle with, he could change it, provided his father didn’t notice. If this verbal detour was, however, spotted, a hand would immediately lift from the bedspread. Like an errant motorist halted by a traffic cop, Phen would have to reverse and park the correct word into the sentence. In Cry, the Beloved Country, he was caught out claiming the road that meanders through the hills, which are lovely beyond any s-s-singing of it, climbed for eight miles. “Not on my odometer.” The s-s-seven miles twisted and turned in his mouth like the road to Carisbrooke, but he finally got there. Revenge was sweet, though, when barely five lines later, he entirely skipped the “Umzimkulu Valley” and moved on unimpeded. The body of his father lay blinking at the ceiling yet Phen knew the mind was far, far away. Although he was reading a story, what he was really offering was transport. Even his stumbling words made wheels good enough to be driven somewhere else.

  There was another rule that was his and his alone. It was only enacted when sleep was at its deepest. And that was when the morphine had seeped in and made his father’s chin crumple into his chest. This caused the transparent oxygen mask to pull his nose up as the mask came to rest between his eyes. Phen would quietly get off his chair and check the heavy breathing from the drooped head. He’d then stare at the now Porky Pig nose and whisper “Th-th-th-th-th-that’s all folks!” This benediction allowed him two options. He could slowly move to the door and close it behind him. Or he could resume his seat and once more pick up the book he was reading. Only this time the story and the words were his.

  The book on his lap was a guide, a general reference. He was not bound by its lines nor intimidated by its narrative. He read more loudly now and often melodramatically. His father’s heavy snoring and occasional farts only added to the theatre of it all. Phen’s arms swept and his fists clenched. They’d watched The History of Shakespeare in the assembly hall in preparation for the school play. Everyone else had laughed at the acting. Phen, though, had loved the extra-wide eyes, the wrist on the forehead and the pretend sword fights. This was an adult cartoon with grown-ups acting like children while throwing thees and thous at each other.

  Whatever he was reading, he now performed with similar gusto. If he battled with words or didn’t like the characters, he changed them. If the story was slow or boring, or in any way not to his liking, he changed that too. He would decide who won. His heroes were exalted with passionate praise and animated adoration. The mean, the greedy, the evil suffered terrible consequences. Anything he wanted, any time he wanted.

  His mother caught him in full flight. He turned around to find her standing at the open door. He had no idea how long she’d been there for. She patted and straightened her apron as if some of the words might’ve splashed there too.

  “Dinner’s ready.”

  He wanted to explain over the cottage pie. As his fork dipped through the mashed potato and into the mince, he wanted to say how that curtained bedroom was a prison and an escape. How he never felt closer and further away from his father than when reading to him. How, sometimes, when the words and the stories caused chuckles and smiles, the body in the bed was almost Dad. And how sometimes, no matter how or what he read, the body stayed motionless.

  But, as usual, he couldn’t find the words.

  4
<
br />   Sputnik

  /sput-nik/ noun

  “Your mother,” Uncle Ed said, “was some looker,” and then correcting himself, added, “she still is.” Uncle Ed wasn’t Phen’s real uncle but that’s what he called him. His full name was Edward, which seemed to suit his double-breasted jackets and cufflinks better. It also matched his head, which sported the world’s most marginal side parting. To all intents and purposes Uncle Ed was bald except for two narrow strips which started at each temple then petered out as they moved towards the back of his skull. In addition, no more than a few dozen hairs looped over a polished landscape from one side to the other. These survivors were the cause for a side parting to be maintained with incredible precision. Equally spaced, they half-orbited Ed’s head like the trajectories of the Sputnik Phen had seen in a Life magazine.

  He had heard from his grandmother that Uncle Ed had been “sweet” on his mother although he’d gallantly stepped aside when Dennis, his father, had won her hand. There was much debate on whether this had been a wise course of events. “When life turns as black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat, you don’t want a man who’s all bum and parsley,” his grandmother had said to Aunt Aida. “Anyway, he’s doon if not oot so now’s not the time to sew his life with a hot needle and a burnin’ thread.” Dennis and Uncle Ed had met on an Egyptian runway during the Second World War and stayed best friends ever since. Proof of this lay on the sideboard in the dining room. The silver frame held the black-and-white picture stiffly to attention. Dennis smiled widely next to his beautiful bride, while the best man, already losing much of his hair, tried to do the same.

  When he overheard that Uncle Ed “would always fly solo” he nearly, stupidly, asked if he owned his own plane. He had, after all, been a pilot in the war. Phen stayed hunched over his homework, leaned a little to the left and waited for clarification. It appeared an affair of the heart was not to be trifled with. It was also confirmed by his gran that love was not a mathematical equation. Just because A loved B it didn’t necessarily mean B loved A. If B loved C there wasn’t much A could do about it. Even if, truth be known, A would’ve been a better match for B. Aunt Aida agreed and pushed a thin slither of fruit cake between her red lips like an envelope sliding into a postbox.

  Phen looked at A in the wedding photo. His hands, with nothing useful to do, were joined together behind his back. This pulled his arms straight and pushed his double-breasted chest out. B and C had their arms wrapped around each other’s waist, eyes wide and expectant as they waited for the camera to click. Although all three letters were lined up equidistant from the photographer, there was a telling gap between A and B. It wasn’t very big, but Phen understood it was large enough for his uncle’s entire life to fall through.

  Mairead was a large, imposing lady. She was neither apologetic about her height nor bashful about her width. Only her oldest friends were allowed to call her May, so this abbreviation didn’t extend to her grandson. Phen was left to work out his grandmother on his own. All he really knew for sure is that she’d left Glasgow by boat shortly after “The Great, Stupid War”. She’d travelled third class with her husband and discovered on her arrival that her sea sickness was also morning sickness. For years he heard her described as a door Scot. He presumed she came from a clan in the Highlands that made, or in her case, possibly blocked, entrances. It was only when Reverend Clayburn surprisingly popped in, that he realised this was another misunderstanding. His father had said his visit was a little premature unless he wanted to administer the last-ish rites. The minister had replied he was not Catholic. This had led his father to say, once he’d left, that he found him a little door. Phen asked if he also came from Scotland. “No, he originally came from the Cotswolds. His pale and bony knees, always bent in the service of the Lord, have never felt the rough tartan of a kilt.”

  Mairead might have been dour, yet there was no doubt she was sweet on Uncle Ed. She said he was “good with money”, implying that Dennis was not. She used her baking prowess as an offensive weapon in declaring her feelings for him. Her affection was made real with butter and flour, yeast and caster sugar. She tried to ensure her visits coincided with his. When this didn’t happen, sealed tins of scones and shortbread were left behind with his name neatly written on the sticky tape. After playing a particularly tough cricket test series against the Australians, Phen had helped himself to one of these biscuits.

  He’d returned home from school on a Tuesday afternoon to find her sitting at the dining-room table. Tuesday was not a normal visiting day, and as Mairead found bus fares exorbitant, he knew she’d walked all the way from Ivanhoe Mansions in Joubert Park. Even taking the lesser gradient of Hospital Hill, instead of Nugget Street, it would’ve been a strenuous hour in the sun. The opened shortbread tin was on the table, the lid lying helplessly on its back. This caused a sharp reflection to bounce off its silvery surface, which underlit her not insubstantial chin. His glowing grandmother said nothing as he put his school bag down and fetched a glass of water. By the time Phen returned, she hadn’t moved an inch. He wondered how long she’d been sitting there.

  “I better check if …”

  “He’s fine.”

  She said nothing more but he knew the chair opposite her was the only place to sit. Having his father blocked as a potential distraction, he turned to his dog. Pal stayed under the telephone table, opened one eye, then feigned sleep. Deserted on all fronts, he sat on the chair and tried to smile.

  “Is something funny?”

  “No.”

  “There has been a theft.”

  Phen said nothing. He knew the tension would surely make him stutter. Plus he couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t be immediately incriminating. He thought he’d resealed the tin perfectly. His mistake was to underestimate his grandmother’s sixth sense and her deeply Calvinistic accounting. Confession or denial seemed equally damning. Instead, he took the last sip of his water and, frowning, pretended to be genuinely confused.

  “How do you square a circle?”

  He shrugged.

  “I bake my shortbread in a square tray. I then cut them into fingers one inch wide and three inches long. How do I fit them into a circular tin?”

  Silence. He tried to drink the water that was no longer in the glass.

  “I place them horizontally in a crisscross pattern in the centre of the tin. This allows for six levels until the tin is full. However, given the nature of a square and a circle, this causes a gap on each side. Into these two gaps I place three vertical fingers of shortbread. Two times three when I went to school equalled six. Has there been any change in the times table that you would like to make me aware of?”

  Phen pondered for a moment then shook his head. His grandmother slowly slid the tin across to his side of the table. He stared into the buttery circle. Some edges were baked a deeper brown. Did these represent the parts of his soul burned by greed?

  “Three plus two equals?”

  “F-f-f-ive.”

  “Indeed.”

  The silence that followed brought the picture above his grandmother’s head into focus. Although only a print of a Pierneef-type landscape, Phen ran into its geometric canopy of trees and tried to hide in its flat planes and smooth lines. While he was there, her hand, made curiously more powerful by all its wrinkles, slowly turned the lid over. Deprived of her glow, she now matched the dark, swollen cloud as it enveloped the acacias behind her.

  “Is there a name on the lid?”

  “Edward.”

  “E-D-W-A-R-D. Do you think there is any possible confusion relating to whom the contents of the tin are intended for?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think theft comes in sizes? Like shoes? And do you think a little theft is not as serious as a big one?”

  Phen was back in the trees.

  “And does a tiny theft deserve just a tiny punishment? Or none at all? Do the Ten Commandments say ‘Thou shalt not steal’ or ‘Thou shalt not steal too much’?” />
  It was an umbrella acacia. The foliage was thickest at the top. Phen climbed as high as he could and wedged himself into a narrow fork.

  “It always starts small, but it never stays that way. If you don’t nip it in the bud, one becomes two. Two becomes four. It starts off as a biscuit and before you know it, it’s your mother’s change, the greengrocer’s apple, then it’s that transistor radio you want and suddenly it’s a car. You promise yourself it’s only going to be one car, just like it’s only going to be one biscuit. And all the time you’re forgetting when someone steals, they take something away from themselves. They take away their self-worth, their ability to look their fellow humans in the eye. It is impossible to steal without taking something from yourself at the same time. Therefore, the more you steal, the less value you have.”

  Broken and contrite, Phen unsuccessfully tried to hold back his tears.

  “So,” his grandmother said, suddenly allowing her accent to stream through, “it’s clear we have a moose in the hoose.” When she talked like this his father said it was English as spoken through a bagpipe. “I’m happy to put this theft down to that raving rodent you found on your hamster wheel. But you’re the man o’ the hoose now. Make sure it never returns. Stay calm. Keep the heid. Am I clear, laddie?” She put the lid back on and, with both hands, placed the tin on her lap. Phen had stopped crying although his eyes were still red and puffy. He nodded and waited for permission to leave. “Dare to be honest,” she said, “and fear no labour – Robbie Burns … I believe there is homework still waiting to be done?”

  Since his father’s illness, everyone kept telling Phen he had to be the man of the house. He was desperate to oblige, but had no idea how he was meant to behave. Read the stock market pages? Smoke a pipe? Shave? He was also perpetually told he had to “be there” for his mother. But where was “there”? As Phen opened his geography book and sharpened his pencil, Pal finally felt safe enough to leave his shelter and join him under the dining-room table.