Simon was getting awfully tired of Mrs Logan next door. She never seemed to go out anywhere. Just stayed home asking nosy questions and playing old Glenn Miller records, and talking to her fat spaniel dog. He wanted to shout at Mum, ‘Where are you going? Who with?’ But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.
Mum said, ‘Mrs Logan’s got a phone number in case . . .’ She paused with her hand on the door handle. ‘Would you like to come to the gallery tomorrow, Simon? We’ve got a new exhibition opening. Lots of nosh for the customers – mini pork-pies and things. You might enjoy it. I’d like you to see where I work. I do feel I’ve been neglecting you these holidays . . . a bit . . .’
He looked at her. Couldn’t quite read the look on her face. Just guilty conscience . . . or a bit slyer than that?
‘No,’ he said abruptly. ‘You know I don’t like paintings.’
‘Suit yourself. Anyway, I won’t be late.’
After she’d gone, he felt restless. Switched the telly from channel to channel, then switched off in disgust. But that made the house too silent. Even if Jane and her fiendish mates were screaming over a flaming pussy-cat in the garden. So he switched it back on, and went and ate three yoghurts in the kitchen.
Then he prowled around the house. It was still exactly as he remembered: the rose wallpaper in the dining room; the can-opener grinding loosely on its moorings on the kitchen wall. But it all seemed empty, unreal. Even the poplars at the bottom of the garden, bathed in evening sunlight, seemed like something on telly. Because Mum wasn’t there. Mum wasn’t there, even when she was there . . .
He would go to the gallery tomorrow; he must find out what was going on.
He wore his suit. What he and Mum called laughingly his chapel-and-weddings suit. He didn’t much like weddings. And he had once worn it at Granny’s house; waiting for them to come back from Granny’s funeral. And when they all came back they were horrible; horribly jolly. Like aristocrats in the French Revolution keeping up their spirits and all the time wondering who was next for the chop.
Worse, he had to wear last summer’s chapel-and-weddings suit, which was halfway up his wrists and ankles; and a white shirt that was too tight.
As soon as they got to the gallery, Mum’s boss grabbed her. A dark man called Gluck, with tight curly hair and a purple shirt, who was frantic about what a man called Higginson would think. Mum reassured him that Higginson was quite human if plied with enough to drink. Then she was busy answering the phone, laying out row on row of puff-pastry things and opening bottles of wine while Gluck merely flapped his hands around. She did find time to push a catalogue into Simon’s hand, give him a shove towards the gallery proper and say, ‘Go and enjoy yourself; keep an open mind!’
Simon drifted into the gallery proper. It was empty, except for pictures. Simon took one look at the pictures, screamed, ‘Oh, no!’ and flung the catalogue the whole length of the room. Then he ran and picked it up quickly again, before Mr Gluck could notice.
All the pictures were by Joe Moreton. There was one of the Prime Minister, and one of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Horrible. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was made up from a jumble of dollar-signs and trade-graphs. Behind him was the Bank of England, all falling down and twisted. It was just a jumble of pen strokes close-to, but if you stepped back it looked just like him, as he appeared on telly. All efficient and sensible on top, and dead scared underneath. All Joe Moreton’s people looked scared underneath, like the people at Granny’s funeral. It made you feel scared yourself; as if nothing in the world was what it seemed. If Joe Moreton drew Jesus Christ, he’d make him out of thorns and nails; saving the world on the surface and as scared as hell underneath. Things like that should be a crime. People like Joe Moreton should be put in prison.
The gallery filled up with potential customers, who mostly walked past Mum as if she wasn’t there and dived for the silver trays of pale wine. Then they turned their backs on the pictures and began shouting at each other that they’d been to Afghanistan for their holidays and barely escaped with their lives. Or walked through Central Park every night and no mugger had dared lay a finger on them. One bald guy, who had only been to New Zealand at the firm’s expense, kept on saying weren’t the New Zealand trees oppressive? Nobody listened to anybody; just tried screaming the loudest.
Simon made his way to the grub and began hammering the pork-pies, seeing how many he could stuff down before they ran out. Nobody else seemed to be eating; just boozing and saying they’d met the Dalai Lama in Kashmir and wasn’t he a dear, but a born loser, poor man, too good for this world. Simon ate seventeen pies and then gave up, feeling sick. Everyone went on stubbing everyone else out, and the room got fuller and fuller of people bigger than himself. Who didn’t hear, the first time he asked to get past them; didn’t hear till the third time when he shouted, and then said, ‘Dear me,’ and backed away to let him through as if he were a leper or something. Somebody asked, ‘Who is that child?’
The gallery became so full he had nowhere left to go. He looked for Mum, but she was busy sticking red spots on pictures, which meant they’d been sold. Mum had to bend down to do it, and one guy passing patted her bottom. Mum gave an annoyed wriggle, but the guy went on patting her till she slid off somewhere, with the guy in pursuit.
The devils began to whisper in his ears, among the noise and the fag-smoke.
He blundered after Mum, but lost her. Blundered into Joe Moreton himself, smiling his sneer and saying a few words every so often. Half a dozen guys wrote down everything Joe said, holding notebooks and glasses in one hand and Biros in the other so that every time they wrote, wine spilled down their notebooks; but they were too sloshed to care.
Joe Moreton saw him and said, ‘Hi, Simon!’ For some reason Simon thought Joe’s eyes went soft, kind . . . but he just pushed past rudely and back into the crowd. He suddenly felt appallingly thirsty; too much salt in the pork-pies. He’d like a glass of water, but there was no water. In desperation he grabbed a glass of yellow wine off a tray and drank it in one swig. It tasted like flat, bitter water, so he had three more.
So hot! Fag-smoke made his eyes sting. He rubbed them, but that made them ten times worse; he couldn’t keep them open and tears were streaming down his face. God, they would think he was crying!
Head spinning. Or the room or something. He looked desperately for a place to hide . . . went round the room three times more. Just when he was thinking he would go on walking forever, like one of Jane’s electric robots, he saw a place.
A set of screens stuck out into the room, to make an interesting shape. There was a gap between one screen and the wall of the gallery. It had been masked by a rubber-plant and a drape of orange curtain, but the curtain had sagged on its drawing-pins.
A quick look around the room. Every back was turned to him. A thin blonde woman had managed to spill her booze down her oyster-coloured suit, and a tall guy was mopping her with a large handkerchief and a lot of enthusiasm. The blonde was swaying her hips and everyone else was jeering them on.
Simon slipped through the curtain, into a tiny world of his own. There was a clutter of things: broken picture-frames, a hammer and nails, a yoghurt-jar of pins and an old wooden chair well-spattered with paint. He sat on the chair and picked up a catalogue from a very dusty pile. It was nearly a year out of date, about a show of sculpture made from plastic ducks and surgical-tubing. By a guy called Yuri Malinowski who’d been an engine-driver on the Trans-Siberian railway, then a shark-fisherman, then Professor of Ecology at Berkeley, California. His sculptures were a protest against the artificiality of modern ecostructures.
Simon put down the catalogue. The screens subdued the noise of the room to a buzz, like a hive of narky bees. They cut off the sight of everybody, except legs and feet. Which made them deliciously ridiculous. He sat watching the feet, and guessing which voices belonged to which feet.
At the moment, there was a pair of well-muscled female legs attached to cherry-red walking sho
es with thick sensible soles. Talking to a pair of possibly-male legs in small-checked trousers. Possibly-male, because the two voices were uncannily alike. Deep-pitched for a woman, but pouffish for a man . . . Spiteful voices.
‘Rotten exhibition,’ said Cherry-shoes. ‘Just selling off his old drawings from the newspapers. Three hundred quid for that.’
‘If there are fools who’ll pay his price . . .’
‘Germans and Japs.’
‘Fair swap – a second-hand Joe Moreton for a lousy Jap colour-telly. Makes me sick the way the Japs ape Western culture. Golf, rugby, ballroom dancing.’
‘Wonder how much they’d give for the Royal Family . . . that’d stop the yen crisis for a bit.’
‘Not on your life. They’d flood the market in a year, with full-sized transistorised walking models of the Duke of Edinburgh – a sort of Action Duke.’
‘Who’s that weird kid? The one with the suit and the short-back-and-sides? Like something out of Tom Brown’s Schooldays.’
‘Haven’t you heard!’ The voice rose to a scream of delight. ‘He’s Moreton’s girlfriend’s brat.’
‘The red-haired bit? That’s not still on . . . ?’
‘Hotter and hotter.’
‘Can’t see what he sees in her. Beyond the usual.’
‘Oh, there’s been none of the usual. He hasn’t laid a finger on her yet. Could have had her for the lift of an eyebrow; she’s panting for it. But that’s not our Joe’s way. It’s marriage or nothing for our Joe.’
‘Why, for God’s sake?’
‘Our Joe’s your original northern puritan. Or you might say . . .’
‘Yes?’ The voice was avid.
‘They say he’s a salt-miner’s son from Cheshire. Ever since he hit the big time, he’s been collecting antiques. Owns half a stately home. Maybe he wants her as the jewel of his collection. Brigadier’s daughter’s a big status-symbol. A well-stuffed memsahib to hang on the wall . . . like the tigers her daddy shot. Apparently she’s willing to sleep with him, but not to marry him. But I can’t see her holding out much longer. Hot little lady, that one. Goes with the red hair.’
They drifted away, discussing a new book that exposed T. S. Eliot as the spiritual bank-clerk he really was.
They had been talking about Mum.
Eventually, the voices in the gallery scattered and died. No more feet appeared under the screens. Mr Gluck could be heard rejoicing to the tune of nine thousand six hundred pounds, and reckoning up his own share of the commission.
Simon sat on behind the screen, still as a stone.
Then he heard Mum say sharply, ‘I can’t find him anywhere, Joe.’
‘Can’t have gone far,’ said Joe soothingly. His voice was different when he was alone with Mum. No sneer. All warm and gooey and utterly repulsive.
‘Joe, I’m worried.’
‘Well, Charlie on the door said he didn’t go out. And he can’t have vanished into thin air . . . so if you rule out the impossible, then what remains, however unlikely . . .’
The screen swung back, and the pair of them were standing there. That was the first time Simon ever thought of them as ‘the pair’.
They all stared at each other silently. The devils had Simon by the throat. He couldn’t have uttered a word if he died for it. The silence got longer and longer, and then Mum reached forward and shook him by the shoulder.
‘Simon. Simon! Whatever’s the matter with you?’
Silence still growing. If I open my mouth an inch, thought Simon, I shall never stop shouting till I’m dead.
Then Joe reached forward and picked a wine glass off the floor, and sniffed it. ‘He’s pissed, the little bastard. Slewed as a newt.’ He laughed, at his own cleverness. ‘Here, I’ll carry him down to the car.’
‘Don’t touch me!’ shouted Simon.
Joe backed away, a baffled look on his hairy face. Then suddenly, without a thing being said, everybody knew that everybody knew. Mum was as white as a sheet; even Joe’s great hairy face looked pale.
‘Then you’ll move yourself. Or I’ll move you,’ said Mum. Her face was white as a burning bone now, under the red hair. She grabbed his shoulder, and for the first time in his life, her hand hurt him.
‘I’ll drive you home,’ said Joe in a shaky voice.
They put Simon in the back of the Range Rover and drove home to Croydon. He sat, trying not to touch the sides of the filthy car; trying to get inside himself so he didn’t even have to sit on its filthy seat. Hating the clutter in the back; the ragged sketchbooks, the muddy Wellingtons, the tattered programmes for the Roundhouse and Vivaldi and Albinoni . . . Trying not even to breathe the car’s air, as the rain came down and the windows steamed up, and the smell of Joe Moreton, animal and yobbish and reeking of French cigarettes, crept into his nostrils.
The pair were silent in the front; but they still kept looking at each other.
FOUR
A little kid came into the classroom with a note.
‘Wood?’ said Slogger. ‘The Head wants to see you. Not in his study; in his house.’
The whole class drew in its breath, sharply. Study was bad; almost certainly a walloping. But house was worse. In the house you learned that your father had dropped down dead of a heart-attack; or your mother run off with another man.
The square of gravel between school and house glistened under the May sun, polished by a recent shower. Peaceful; various hums from various classes through various windows. First-years trying Morning has broken with shrill sweet voices, only to be stopped by the music-master and grumbled at after two lines. Morning certainly broke pretty quickly round here . . .
His footsteps crunched loud and lonely on the gravel. There was a blue Renault 5 parked in front of the Head’s house. Nobody Simon knew.
Had something happened to Mum?
But Mum was sitting in the Head’s best chair. Only nervous; because she had her knees tighter together and her handbag perched on top, and her hands kept undoing the clasp. She’d let her hair grow longer so it was neither one thing nor the other. Her grin was trying too hard.
Old Smily the Head was nervous too. On his feet like greased lightning, making gentle pushing motions with his hands towards the door. Old Smily not wanting to get involved. ‘Your mother has come to take you out to tea, Wood. Lucky lad! What lessons have you got for the rest of the afternoon?’
‘Only RK with you, sir.’
‘Only RK with me,’ mused Old Smily. ‘See what we ushers have to put up with, Mrs Wood? Only RK with me. Ah well . . .’
Moving sideways, like an obsequious crab, he opened his study door even wider. ‘Have a pleasant time. A good chat. If there’s anything else, Mrs Wood, perhaps you’d give me a ring . . . ?’
Outside, Simon said abruptly, ‘Where’s the car?’
Mum unlocked the door of the Renault. It was showroom-shiny, with polythene covers still on the seats.
‘Where’s the Morris?’
‘Sold it. We had to have a change sometime. Heavens, Simon, the Morris was ancient.’
‘But this isn’t big enough for holidays. We can’t get all the stuff in this.’
‘Oh, we can use the— She paused, bit her lip. ‘Let’s go and have some tea.’
‘We can use what?’ shouted Simon. His mind was full of a big white Range Rover.
Mum didn’t answer. Instead, she began asking about school. Lots of questions that had nothing to do with each other. Stupid questions. Questions to which she already knew the answers. Simon grunted back in monosyllables. The new-plastic smell inside the car was choking him like poison gas.
‘Please can we stop? I feel sick.’
Mum pulled up, and savagely applied the handbrake. Then they sat side by side, staring down the sunlit road, while a cold gap grew between them; sort of hovering over the gear-lever. When the gap grew so big that it seemed it must burst the car into a thousand pieces, Mum said:
‘I’m going to get married again, Simon.’
‘To him? Not to him!’
‘Yes.’ They didn’t have to mention any names.
‘But why, why, WHY? We’re OK as we are. We’re fine.’
‘You were fine, Simon. I was lonely.’ She was biting her lip again. But her bosom swelled softly, and her knees were small and shiny beneath her skirt. Mothers shouldn’t look like that.
‘Why were you lonely? You’ve got Jane. And Aunty Marge and Nunk and Aunty Mabel. And . . . your job.’
‘That’s not the same.’
‘Did he buy you this car?’
‘No, Simon, no. I sold some shares.’
‘My father’s shares.’
‘No. Some your grandfather left me, that had nothing to do with Daddy. Anyway, what’s the car got to do with it? Stop being silly. Let’s go and have some tea.’
She re-started the car. Outside, the sunlit country slid past. Cows stared, dogs barked; two women talking at a gate turned to look at them incuriously, heartlessly, as they stopped for a halt sign. Inside the car the cold swelled and swelled again. He kept on swallowing it, as it poured down his throat.
‘Please stop the car, I feel sick again.’
‘Simon. This is ridiculous.’ But she stopped. He got out and faced into the hedge and a signpost saying Swindon 2. Trying to be sick. But he only managed an enormous belch that left a rotten taste in his mouth, and a few strings of saliva on the tall dusty roadside weeds. When he turned back, Mum was looking at him, dead worried. Her look somehow made the big cold thing go away. He didn’t really hate her; she was Mum. He felt he had just been very ill, or insane, but he was better now. It was going to be all right. She held out her hand to him; the one with the wedding ring he used to turn round and round her finger when he was small.
He took her hand now, turned the ring gently and said, ‘Please don’t marry him. Please. I really couldn’t bear it. I don’t care what else you do – when I’m not around. But please don’t marry him.’ He lowered his head in a kind of surrender. She ruffled his hair with her other hand.
Scarecrows Page 3
