by Ian Mcewan
This time, Peter held down his fear. He knew there was only one way of dealing with this. He crawled to the legs, pulled himself into a standing position and, still panting from the effort, addressed himself directly to Kenneth.
‘Listen here. You’ve got to stop looking at me like that. You’ve got no reason to dislike me. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m all right really …’
Even as he was speaking these words, the room began to glow, and turn and shrink. Suddenly, Peter found himself sit- ting in the chair, with baby Kenneth standing between his knees, trying to tell him something.
Peter picked the baby up and put him on his lap. Cautiously, Kenneth reached out his hand and pushed the tip of Peter’s nose.
‘Parp!’ Peter said loudly.
The baby’s hand shot back, the face briefly showed alarm which dissolved into smiles, and then laughter. If Peter had told the cleverest, funniest, stupidest joke in the universe, it could not have made anyone laugh more than Kenneth did now.
Peter looked over the baby’s head at Kate sitting on the other side of the room. ‘I don’t really think he’s a monster. Actually, you know, I quite like him.’
Kate said nothing. She did not believe him.
‘I mean,’ Peter went on, ‘I think he’s brilliant.’
‘Hmm,’ Kate said. She put down the wand. ‘If you really meant that, you’d come with me and take him to the park in his pram.’ It was a challenge she was certain he could not accept.
‘Yeah!’ Peter said, to his sister’s astonishment. Still holding the baby, he got to his feet. ‘Let’s go. There’ll be some amazing things for him to look at.’
Kate stood up too. ‘Peter, what’s got into you?’ But her brother did not hear her. As he carried Kenneth out into the hall, he was starting to sing at full volume, ‘Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool …’
Chapter Seven
The Grown-up
Every August the Fortune family rented a small fisherman’s cottage on the Cornish coast. Anyone who saw the place would have to agree it was a kind of paradise. You stepped out of the front door into an orchard. Beyond it was a tiny stream – hardly more than a ditch, but useful for damming up. Further on, behind a thicket, ran a disused railway track that had once brought out the ore from a local tin mine. Half a mile along was a boarded-up tunnel that the children were forbidden to enter. Round the back of the cottage were a few square yards of scrubby back garden which gave directly on to a broad horse- shoe of a bay fringed with fine yellow sand. At one end of the bay were caves just deep and dark enough to be scary. At low tide there were rock pools. In the car park behind the bay there was an ice-cream van from late morning to dusk. There were half a dozen cottages grouped along the bay and the Fortunes knew and liked the other families who came in August. More than a dozen children aged between two and fourteen made up a ragged group who played together and were known, at least to themselves, as The Beach Gang.
By far the best times were the evenings, when the sun sank into the Atlantic and the families gathered in one of the back gardens for a barbecue. After they had eaten, the grown-ups would be far too content with their drinks and endless stories to set about putting the children to bed, and this was when The Beach Gang would drift away into the smooth calm of dusk, back to all their favourite daytime places. Except now there was the mystery of darkness and strange shadows, and the cooling sand beneath their feet, and the delicious feeling as they ran about in their games that they were playing on borrowed time. It was way past bedtime, and the children knew that sooner or later the grown-ups would stir themselves out of conversations and the names would ring out in the night air – Charlie! Harriet! Toby! Kate! Peter!
Sometimes, when the shouts of the grown-ups could not reach the children at the far end of the beach, they sent Gwendoline. She was the big sister of three of the children in The Beach Gang. Because there was not enough room at her family’s cottage, Gwendoline was staying with the Fortunes. She had the bedroom next to Peter’s. She seemed so sad, so wrapped up in her thoughts. She was a grown-up – some said she was as old as nineteen – and she sat with the grown-ups all the time, but she didn’t join in their chat. She was a medical student and she was getting ready for an important exam. Peter thought about her a lot, though he wasn’t sure why. She had green eyes, and hair that was so ginger you could almost say it was orange. She sometimes stared at Peter long and hard, but she rarely spoke to him.
When she came to collect the children she came ambling slowly across the beach, barefoot and in ragged shorts, and she only looked up when she reached them. She spoke in a quiet, sad, musical voice. ‘C’mon you lot. Bed!’, and then without waiting to hear their protests, or repeat herself, she would turn and walk away, scuffing the sand as she went. Was she sad because she was a grown-up and wasn’t really enjoying it? It was hard to tell.
It was in the Cornish summer of his twelfth year that Peter began to notice just how different the worlds of children and grown-ups were. You could not exactly say that the parents never had fun. They went for swims – but never for longer than twenty minutes. They liked a game of volley-ball, but only for half an hour or so. Occasionally they could be talked into hide-and-seek or lurky turkey or building a giant sand- castle, but those were special occasions. The fact was that all grown-ups, given half the chance, chose to sink into one of three activities on the beach: sitting around talking, reading newspapers and books, or snoozing. Their only exercise (if you could call it that) was long boring walks, and these were nothing more than excuses for more talking. On the beach, they often glanced at their watches and, long before anyone was hungry, began telling each other it was time to start thinking about lunch or supper.
They invented errands for themselves – to the odd-job man who lived half a mile away, or to the garage in the village, or to the nearby town on shopping expeditions. They came back complaining about the holiday traffic, but of course, they were the holiday traffic. These restless grown-ups made constant visits to the telephone box at the end of the lane to call their relatives, or their work, or their grown-up children. Peter noticed that most grown-ups could not begin their day happily until they had driven off to find a newspaper, the right newspaper. Others could not get through the day without cigarettes. Others had to have beer. Others could not get by without coffee. Some could not read a newspaper without smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. Adults were always snapping their fingers and groaning because someone had returned from town and forgotten something; there was always one more thing needed, and promises were made to get it tomorrow – another folding chair, shampoo, garlic, sun- glasses, clothes pegs – as if the holiday could not be enjoyed, could not even begin, until all these useless items had been gathered up. Gwendoline, on the other hand, was different. She simply sat in a chair all day, reading a book.
Meanwhile Peter and his friends never knew the day of the week or the hour of the day. They surged up and down the beach, chasing, hiding, battling, invading, in games of pirates or aliens from space. In the sand they built dams, canals, fortresses and a water zoo which they stocked with crabs and shrimps. Peter and the other older children made up stories they said were true to terrify the little ones. Sea monsters with tentacles that crawled out of the surf and seized children by the ankles and dragged them into the deep. Or the madman with seaweed hair who lived in the cave and turned children into lobsters. Peter worked so hard on these stories that he found himself unwilling to go into the cave alone, and when he was swimming he shuddered when a strand of seaweed brushed against his foot.
Sometimes The Beach Gang wandered inland, to the orchard where they were building a camp. Or they ran along the old track to the forbidden tunnel. There was a gap in the boards and they dared each other to squeeze through into total darkness. Water dripped with a hollow, creepy, plopping echo. There were scurrying sounds which they thought might be rats, and there was always a dank sooty breeze which one of the big girls said was the breath of a wi
tch. No one believed her, but no one dared walk more than a few paces in.
These summer days started early and ended late. Sometimes, as he was getting into bed, Peter would try to remember how the day had begun. The events of the morning seemed to have happened weeks before. There were times when he was still struggling to remember the beginning of the day when he fell asleep.
One evening after supper Peter got into an argument with one of the other boys whose name was Henry. The trouble started over a chocolate bar, but the row soon developed into a bout of name calling. For some reason all the other children, except of course Kate, sided with Henry. Peter threw the bar of chocolate down into the sand and walked off by himself. Kate went indoors to get a plaster for a cut on her foot. The rest of the group wandered off along the shore. Peter turned and watched them go. He heard laughter. Perhaps they were talking about him. As the group moved further away in the dusk, its individual members were lost to view and all that could be seen was a blob that moved and stretched this way and that. More likely they had forgotten all about him and were playing a new game.
Peter continued to stand with his back to the sea. A sudden cool wind made him shiver. He looked towards the cottages. He could just make out the low murmur of adult conversation, the sound of a wine-cork being pulled, the musical sound of a woman’s laughter, perhaps his mother’s. Standing there that August evening between the two groups, the sea lapping round his bare feet, Peter suddenly grasped something very obvious and terrible: one day he would leave the group that ran wild up and down the beach, and he would join the group that sat and talked. It was hard to believe, but he knew it was true. He would care about different things, about work, money and tax, cheque-books, keys and coffee, and talking and sitting, endless sitting.
These thoughts were on his mind as he got into bed that night. And they were not exactly happy thoughts. How could he be happy at the prospect of a life spent sitting down and talking? Or doing errands and going to work. And never playing, never really having fun. One day he would be an entirely different person. It would happen so slowly he would not even notice, and when it had, his brilliant, playful eleven-year-old self would be as far away, as peculiar and as difficult to under- stand, as all grown-ups seemed to him now. And with these sad thoughts he drifted into sleep.
The following morning Peter Fortune woke from troubled dreams to find himself transformed into a giant person, an adult. He tried to move his arms and legs, but they were heavy and the effort was too much for him so early in the day. So he lay still and listened to the birds outside his window and looked about him. His room was much the same, though it did seem a great deal smaller. His mouth was dry, he had a headache and he was feeling a little dizzy. It hurt when he blinked. He had drunk too much wine the night before, he realised. And perhaps he had eaten too much as well, because his stomach felt tight. And he had been talking too much, because his throat was sore.
He groaned and rolled over on to his back. He made a huge effort and managed to raise his arm and get his hand to his face so that he could rub his eyes. The skin along the line of his jaw rasped under his touch like sandpaper. He would have to get up and shave before he could do anything else. And he would have to make a move because there were things that needed doing, errands to run, jobs to do. But before he could stir, he was startled by the sight of his hand. It was covered in thick black curly hairs! He stared at this great fat thing with its sausage-sized fingers and began to laugh. Even the knuckles sprouted hairs. The more he looked at it, especially when he clenched it, the more it resembled a toilet brush.
He got himself upright and sat on the edge of the bed. He was naked. His body was hard, bony and hairy all over, with new muscles in his arms and legs. When at last he stood up he almost cracked his head on one of the low beams of his attic room. ‘This is ridic …’ he started to say, but his own voice astonished him. It sounded like a cross between a lawn- mower and a fog horn. I need to brush my teeth and gargle, he thought. As he crossed the room to the hand-basin, the floorboards creaked under his weight. His knee joints felt thicker, stiffer. When he got to the basin, he had to cling to it while he examined his face in the mirror. With its mask of black stubble, it looked like an ape was staring back at him.
He found he knew just what to do when it came to shaving. He had watched his father often enough. When he had finished, the face looked a little more like his own. In fact rather better, less puffy than his eleven-year-old face, with a proud jaw and a bold stare. Rather handsome, he thought.
He dressed in the clothes that were lying on a chair and went downstairs. Everyone’s going to get a shock, he thought, when they see I’ve grown ten years older and a foot longer in the night. But of the three adults slouched round the breakfast table, only Gwendoline glanced up at him with a flash of brilliant green eyes, and quickly looked away. His parents simply muttered G’morning, and went on reading their papers. Peter felt strange in his stomach. He poured his coffee and took up the paper that was folded by his plate and scanned the front page. A strike, a scandal about guns, and a meeting of the leaders of several important countries. He found he knew the names of all the presidents and min- isters and he knew their stories and what they were after. His stomach still felt odd. He sipped the coffee. It tasted foul, as if burnt cardboard had been mashed up and boiled in bathwater. He went on sipping anyway because he didn’t want anyone to think that he was really eleven years old.
Peter finished his toast and stood up. Through the window he could see The Beach Gang running along the shoreline towards the cave. What a waste of energy so early in the day!
‘I’m going to phone my work,’ Peter announced importantly to the room, ‘and I’m going to go for a stroll.’ Was there ever anything duller and more grown-up than a stroll? His father grunted. His mother said, ‘Fine,’ and Gwendoline stared at her plate.
In the hallway, he dialled his assistant at the laboratory in London. All inventors have at least one assistant.
‘How’s the anti-gravity machine coming along?’ Peter asked. ‘Did you get my latest drawings?’
‘Your drawings made everything clear,’ the assistant said. ‘We made the changes you suggested, then we switched the machine on for five seconds. Everything in the room started floating about, just as you said. Before we try again we’re going to have to screw the tables and chairs to the floor.’
‘I don’t want you to try again until I’m back from holiday,’ Peter said. ‘I want to see it for myself. I’ll drive back at the weekend.’
When he had finished on the phone, he stepped out into the orchard and stood by the stream. It was a beautiful day. The water flowing under the wooden footbridge made a lovely sound and he was excited about his new invention. But for some reason he did not feel like moving away from the house. He heard a sound behind him and turned. Gwendoline was standing in the doorway, watching him. Peter felt the tightness in his stomach again. It was a cold, falling sensation. He felt a little weak about the knees. Gwendoline rested her arm on the rim of the ancient water butt which stood by the front door. Morning sunlight, broken by the leaves of the apple trees, bobbed about her shoulders and in her hair. In all his twenty-one years, Peter had never seen anything so, well, perfect, delicious, brilliant, beautiful … there was no word good enough for what he saw. Her green eyes were fixed on his.
‘So you’re going for a walk,’ she said lightly.
Peter could hardly trust himself to speak. He cleared his throat. ‘Yes. Want to come?’
They went down through the orchard to the raised cinder path where the railway track had once been. They talked about nothing in particular – about the holiday, the weather, news- paper stories – anything to avoid talking about themselves. She put her smooth cool hand in his as they walked along. Peter seriously thought he might float off to the tops of the trees. He had heard about boys and girls, men and women, falling in love and feeling crazy, but he had always thought that people made too much of it. After all, ho
w much can you really like someone? And in movies, those bits which they always had to have, when the hero and heroine took time off to get soppy and gaze into each other’s eyes and kiss had always seemed to him ridiculous time-wasting junk that did nothing more than hold up the story for minutes on end. Now here he was, melting away at the mere touch of Gwendoline’s hand, and he wanted to shout, to roar for joy.
They came to the tunnel, and without stopping to talk about it, they stepped through the gap in the boards, into the cold smoky blackness. They clung to each other as they went further in, and giggled when they trod in puddles. The tunnel was not very long. Already they could see the far end, glowing like a pink star. Half-way along they stopped. They stood close. Their arms and faces were still warm from the sun’s heat. They stood close together and, to the sound of scurrying animals and water plop-plopping into puddles, they kissed. Peter knew that in all the years of a happy childhood, and even in its very best moments, like playing out with The Beach Gang on a summer’s evening, he had never done anything better, anything so thrilling and strange as kiss Gwendoline in the railway tunnel.
As they walked on towards the light she told him how one day she would be a doctor and a scientist and she would work on new cures for deadly diseases. They stepped blinking into the sunshine and found a place under the trees where blue flowers grew on slender bendy stems. They lay on their backs, eyes closed, side by side in the long grass, surrounded by murmuring insects. He told her about his invention, the antigravity machine. They could set off together soon, climb into his green open-topped two-seater sports car and drive through the narrow lanes of Cornwall and Devon to London. They would stop at a restaurant along the way and order up chocolate mousse and ice-cream, and lemonade by the bucket. They would arrive at midnight outside the building. They would ride up in the lift. He would unlock the laboratory and show her the machine with its dials and warmly glowing lights. He would throw the switch, and together they would bump and tumble gently in the air with the tables and chairs …
