The-cement-garden - Ian McEwan The Cement Garden PART ONE 1 I did not kill my father, but I - Studeersnel (2024)

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Ian McEwan The Cement Garden

PART ONE

1

I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way. Andbut for the fact that it coincided with a landmark in my own physical growth, hisdeath seemed insignificant compared with what followed. My sisters and I talkedabout him the week after he died, and Sue certainly cried when the ambulancemen tucked him up in a bright- red blanket and carried him away. He was a frail,irascible, obsessive man with yellowish hands and face. I am only including thelittle story of his death to explain how my sisters and I came to have such a largequantity of cement at our disposal. In the early summer of my fourteenth year alorry pulled up outside our house. I was sitting on the front step rereading acomic. The driver and another man came to- wards me. They were covered in afine, pale dust which gave their faces a ghostly look. They were both whistlingshrilly completely different tunes. I stood up and held the comic out of sight. Iwished I had been reading the racing page of my father's paper, or the footballresults. 'Cement?' one of them said. I hooked my thumbs into my pockets,moved my weight on to one foot and narrowed my eyes a little. I wanted to saysomething terse and ap- propriate, but I was not sure I had heard them right. Ileft it too long, for the one who had spoken rolled his eyes towards the sky andwith his hands on his hips stared past me at the front door. It opened and myfather stepped out biting his pipe and holding a clipboard against his hip.'Cement,' the man said again, this time with a down- ward inflexion. My fathernodded. I folded the comic into my back pocket and followed the three men upthe path to the lorry. My father stood on tiptoe to look over the side, took hispipe from his mouth and nodded again. The man who had not yet spoken made asavage chop with his hand. A steel pin flew free and one side of the lorry fellaway with a great noise. The tightly packed paper sacks of cement were arrangedtwo deep along the floor of the lorry. My father counted them, looked at hisclipboard and said, 'Fifteen.' The two men grunted. I liked this kind of talk. I toosaid to myself, 'Fifteen.' The men took a sack each on their shoulders and wewent back down the path, this time with me in front followed by my father.Round to one side of the house he pointed with the wet stem of his pipe at thecoal hole. The men heaved their sacks into the cellar and returned to their lorryfor more. My father made a mark on the clipboard with a pencil which dangled

on. Julie and I looked at each other knowingly, knowing nothing. 'It's Julie'sturn,' I said. 'No,' she said as always. 'It's your turn.' Still on her back, Suepleaded with us. I crossed the room, picked up Sue's skirt and threw it at her.'Out of the question,' I said through an imaginary pipe. 'That's the end of it.' Ilocked myself in the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath with my pantsround my ankles. I thought of Julie's pale-brown fingers between Sue's legs as Ibrought myself to my quick, dry stab of pleasure. I remained doubled up afterthe spasm passed and became aware that downstairs the voices had long agoceased. The next morning I went down into the cellar with my younger brotherTom. It was large and divided into a number of meaningless rooms. Tom clungto my side as we descended the stone stairs. He had heard about the cement bagsand now he wanted to look at them. The coal hole gave on to the largest of therooms and the bags were strewn as they had fallen over what remained of lastyear's coal. Along one wall was a massive tin chest, something to do with myfather's brief time in the Army, and used for a while to hold the co*ke separatefrom the coal. Tom wanted to look inside so I lifted the lid for him. It was emptyand blackened, so black that in this dusty light we could not see the bottom.Believing he was staring into a deep hole, Tom gripped the edge and shoutedinto the trunk and waited for his echo. When nothing happened he demanded tobe shown the other rooms. I took him to one nearer the stairs. The door wasalmost off its hinges and when I pushed it it came away completely. Tomlaughed and had his echo at last returned to him from the room we had just left.In this room there were cardboard boxes of mildewed clothes, none of themfamiliar to me. Tom found some of his old toys. He turned them overcontemptuously with his foot and told me they were for babies. Heaped upbehind the door was an old brass cot that all of us had slept in at one time oranother. Tom wanted me to reassemble it for him and I told him that cots werefor babies too. At the foot of the stairs we met our father coming down. Hewanted me, he said, to give him a hand with the sacks. We followed him backinto the large room. Tom was scared of his father and kept well behind me. Juliehad told me recently that now Father was a semi-invalid he would have tocompete with Tom for Mother's attention. It was an extraordinary idea and Ithought about it for a long time. So simple, so bizarre, a small boy and a grownman competing. Later I asked Julie who would win and without hesitation shesaid, 'Tom of course, and Dad'll take it out on him.' And he was strict with Tom,always going on at him in a needling sort of way. He used Mother against Tommuch as he used his pipe against her. 'Don't talk to your mother like that,' or 'Situp straight when your mother is talking to you.' She took all this in silence. IfFather then left the room she would smile briefly at Tom or tidy his hair with her

fingers. Now Tom stood back from the doorway watching us drag each sackbetween us across the floor, arranging them in two neat lines along the wall.Because of his heart attack my father was forbidden this sort of work, but I madesure he took as much weight as I did. When we bent down and each took hold ofa corner of a sack, I felt him delay, waiting for me to take up the strain. But Isaid, 'One, two, three...' and pulled only when I saw his arm stiffen. If I was to domore, then I wanted him to acknowledge it out loud. When we were done westood back, like workers do, looking at the job. My father leaned with one handagainst the wall breathing heavily. Deliberately, I breathed as lightly as I could,through my nose, even though it made me feel faint. I kept my hands casually onmy hips. 'What do you want all this for?' I felt I now had a right to ask. Hesnatched at words between breaths. 'For... the garden.' I waited for more but aftera pause he turned to leave. In the doorway he caught hold of Tom's arm. 'Look atthe state of your hands,' he complained, unaware of the mess his own hand wasmaking on Tom's shirt. 'Go on, up you go.' I remained behind a moment and thenbegan turning off the lights. Hearing the clicks, so it seemed to me, my fatherstopped at the foot of the stairs and reminded me sternly to turn off all the lightsbefore I came up. 'I already was,' I said irritably. But he was coughing loudly onhis way up the stairs. He had constructed rather than cultivated his gardenaccording to plans he sometimes spread out on the kitchen table in the eveningswhile we peered over his shoulder. There were narrow flagstone paths whichmade elaborate curves to visit flower beds that were only a few feet away. Onepath spiralled up round a rockery as though it was a mountain pass. It annoyedhim once to see Tom walking straight up the side of the rockery using the pathlike a short flight of stairs. 'Walk up it properly,' he shouted out of the kitchenwindow. There was a lawn the size of a card table raised a couple of feet on apile of rocks. Round the edge of the lawn there was just space for a single row ofmarigolds. He alone called it the hanging garden. In the very centre of thehanging garden was a plaster statue of a dancing Pan. Here and there weresudden flights of steps, down then up. There was a pond with a blue plasticbottom. Once he brought home two goldfish in a plastic bag. The birds ate themthe same day. The paths were so narrow it was possible to lose your balance andfall into the flower beds. He chose flowers for their neatness and symmetry. Heliked tulips best of all and planted them well a. He did not like bushes or ivy orroses. He would have no- thing that tangled. On either side of us the houses hadbeen cleared and in summer the vacant sites grew lush with weeds and theirflowers. Before his first heart attack he had intended to build a high wall roundhis special world. There were a few running jokes in the family, initiated andmaintained by my father. Against Sue for having almost invisible eyebrows and

front and back, with an even plane of concrete. My father confirmed this oneevening. 'It will be tidier,' he said. 'I won't be able to keep up the garden now' (hetapped his left breast with his pipe) 'and it will keep the muck off your mother'sclean floors.' He was so convinced of the sanity of his ideas that throughembarrassment, rather than fear, no one spoke against the plan. In fact, a greatexpanse of concrete round the house appealed to me. It would be a place to playfootball. I saw helicopters landing there. Above all, mixing concrete andspreading it over a levelled garden was a fascinating violation. My excitementincreased when my father talked of hiring a cement mixer. My mother must havetalked him out of that, for we started work one Saturday morning in June withtwo shovels. In the cellar we split open one of the paper sacks and filled a zincbucket with the fine, pale-grey powder. Then my father went outside to take thebucket from me as I passed it up through the coal hole. When he reachedforward he made a silhouette against the white, featureless sky behind him. Heemptied the powder on the path and returned the bucket to me for refilling.When we had enough of that, I wheeled a barrowload of sand from the front andadded it to the pile. His plan was to make a hard path round the side of the houseso that it would be easy to move sand from the front garden to the back. Apartfrom his infrequent, terse instructions we said nothing. I was pleased that weknew so exactly what we were doing and what the other was thinking that wedid not need to speak. For once I felt at ease with him. While I fetched water inthe bucket he shaped the cement and sand into a mound with a dip in its centre. Idid the mixing while he added the water. He showed me how to use the inside ofmy knee against my forearm to gain better leverage. I pretended that I knewalready. When the mix was consistent we spread it on the ground. Then myfather went down on his knees and smoothed the surface with the flat side of ashort plank. I stood behind him leaning on my shovel. He stood up andsupported himself against the fence and closed his eyes. When he opened themhe blinked as if surprised to find himself there and said, 'Well, let's get on then.'We repeated the operation, the bucketloads through the coal hole, thewheelbarrow, the water, the mixing and spread- ing and smoothing. The fourthtime round boredom and familiar longings were slowing my movements. Iyawned frequently and my legs felt weak behind the knees. In the cellar I put myhands in my pants. I wondered where my sisters were. Why weren't theyhelping? I passed a bucketful to my father and then, addressing myself to hisshape, told him I needed to go to the toilet. He sighed and at the same time madea noise with his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Upstairs, aware of hisimpatience, I worked on my- self rapidly. As usual, the image before me wasJulie's hand between Sue's legs. From downstairs I could hear the scrape of the

shovel. My father was mixing the cement himself. Then it happened, it appearedquite suddenly on the back of my wrist, and though I knew about it from jokesand school biology books, and had been waiting for many months, hoping that Iwas no different from any other, now I was astonished and moved. Against thedowny hairs, lying across the edge of a grey concrete stain, glis- tened a littlepatch of liquid, not milky as I had thought, but colourless. I dabbed at it with mytongue and it tasted of nothing. I stared at it a long time, up close to look forlittle things with long flickering tails. As I watched, it dried to a barely visibleshiny crust which cracked when I flexed my wrist. I decided not to wash it away.I remembered my father waiting and I hurried down- stairs. My mother, Julieand Sue were standing about talking in the kitchen as I passed through. They didnot seem to notice me. My father was lying face down on the ground, his headresting on the newly spread concrete. The smoothing plank was in his hand. Iapproached slowly, knowing I had to run for help. For several seconds I couldnot move away. I stared wonderingly, just as I had a few minutes before. A lightbreeze stirred a loose corner of his shirt. Subsequently there was a great deal ofactivity and noise. An ambulance came and my mother went off in it with myfather, who was laid out on a stretcher and covered with a red blanket. In theliving room Sue cried and Julie comforted her. The radio was playing in thekitchen. I went back outside after the ambulance had left to look at our path. Idid not have a thought in my head as I picked up the plank and carefullysmoothed away his impression in the soft, fresh concrete.

2

During the following year Julie trained for the school athletics team. She alreadyheld the local under-eighteen records for the 100- and 220-yard sprint. She couldrun faster than anyone I knew. Father had never taken her seriously, he said itwas daft in a girl, running fast, and not long before he died he refused to come toa sports meeting with us. We attacked him bitterly, even Mother joined in. Helaughed at our exasperation. Perhaps he really intended to be there, but we lefthim alone and sulked among our- selves. On the day, because we did not ask himto come, he forgot and never saw in the last month of his life his elder daughterstar of all the field. He missed the pale- brown, slim legs flickering across thegreen like blades, or me, Tom, Mother and Sue running across the enclosure tocover Julie with kisses when she took her third race. In the evenings she oftenstayed at home to wash her hair and iron the pleats in her navy-blue school skirt.She was one of a handful of daring girls at school who wore starched whitepetticoats beneath their skirts to fill them out and make them swirl when they

Julie would walk to school with me. We used to go together every morning, butnow she preferred not to be seen with me. I continued to toss the apple,imagining it made them all uneasy. My mother watched me steadily. 'Come on,Julie,' I said at last. Julie refilled her teacup. 'i've got things to do,' she saidfirmly. 'You go on.' 'What about you then, Sue?' My younger sister did not lookup from her book. She murmured, 'Not going yet.' My mother reminded megently that I had not had my breakfast but I was already on my way through thehall. I slammed the front door hard and crossed the road. Our house had oncestood in a street full of houses. Now it stood on empty land where stingingnettles were growing round torn corrugated tin. The other houses were knockeddown for a motorway they had never built. Sometimes kids from the towerblocks came to play near our house, but usually they went further up the road tothe empty prefabs to kick the walls down and pick up what they could find. Oncethey set fire to one, and no one cared very much. Our house was old and large. Itwas built to look a little like a castle, with thick walls, squat windows andcrenella- tions above the front door. Seen from across the road it looked like theface of someone concentrating, trying to remember. No one ever came to visitus. Neither my mother nor my father when he was alive had any real friendsoutside the family. They were both only children, and all my grand- parents weredead. My mother had distant relatives in Ireland whom she had not seen sinceshe was a child. Tom had a couple of friends he sometimes played with in thestreet, but we never let him bring them into the house. There was not even amilkman in our road now. As far as I could remember, the last people to visit thehouse had been the ambulance men who took my father away. I stood thereseveral minutes wondering whether to return indoors and say somethingconciliatory to my mother. I was about to move on when the front door openedand Julie slipped out. She wore her black gabar- dine school raincoat beltedtightly about her waist and the collar was turned up. She turned quickly to catchthe front door before it slammed and the coat, skirt and petticoat spun with her,the desired effect. She had not seen me yet. I watched her sling her satchel overher shoulder. Julie could run like the wind, but she walked as though asleep,dead slow, straight-backed, and in a very straight line. She often appeared deepin thought, but when we asked her she always protested that her mind wasempty. She did not see me until she was across the road and then she half-smiled,half-pouted and remained silent. Her silence made us all a little afraid of her, butagain she would protest, her voice musical with bemusem*nt, that she was theone who was afraid. It was true, she was shy - there was a rumour she neverspoke in class without blushing - but she had the quiet strength and detachment,and lived in the separate world of those who are, and secretly know they are,

exceptionally beautiful. I walked alongside her and she stared ahead, her backstraight as a ruler, her lips softly pursed. A hundred yards on, our road ran intoanother street. A few terraced houses remained. The rest, and all the houses inthe next street across, had been cleared to make way for four twenty-storeytower blocks. They stood on wide aprons of cracked asphalt where weeds werepushing through. They looked even older and sadder than our house. All downtheir concrete sides were colossal stains, almost black, caused by the rain. Theynever dried out. When Julie and I reached the end of our road I lunged at herwrist and said, 'Carry your satchel, miss.' Julie pulled her arm away and went onwalking. I danced backwards in her path. Her brooding silences turned me into anuisance. 'Wanna fight? Wanna race?'Julie lowered her eyes and kept to hercourse. I said in a normal voice, 'What's wrong?' 'Nothing.' 'Are you pissed off?''Yes.' 'With me?' 'Yes.' I paused before speaking again. Already Julie was drift-ing away, absorbed in some internal vision of her anger. I said, 'Because ofMum?' We were drawing level with the first of the tower blocks and we couldsee through into the lobby. A gang of kids from another school were gatheredround the lift shaft. They lolled against the walls without talking. They werewaiting for someone to come down in the lift. I said, 'I'll go back then.' I stopped.Julie shrugged and made a sudden movement with her hand that made it clearshe was leaving me behind. Back on our street I met Sue. She walked with abook held open in front of her. Her satchel was strapped tight and high across hershoulders. Tom walked a few yards behind. From the look on his face it wasclear there had been another scene getting him out of the house. I felt easier withSue. She was two years younger than I, and if she had secrets I was notintimidated by them. Once I saw in her bedroom a lotion she had bought to'dissolve' her freckles. Her face was long and delicate, the lips colourless and theeyes small and tired-looking with pale, almost invisible lashes. With her highforehead and wispy hair she sometimes really did look like a girl from anotherplanet. We did not stop, but as we passed Sue looked up from her book and said,'You're going to be late.' And I muttered, 'Forgot something.' Tom waspreoccupied with his own dread of school and did not notice me. The realisationthat Sue was taking him to school to save Mother the walk increased my guiltand I walked faster. I walked round the side of the house to the back garden andwatched my mother through one of the kitchen windows. She sat at the tablewith the mess of our break- fast and four empty chairs in front of her.Immediately facing her was my untouched bowl of porridge. One hand was inher lap, the other on the table, the arm crooked as if ready to receive her head.Near her was a squat black bottle which contained her pills. Her face mixedJulie's features with Sue's, as though she were their child. The skin was smooth

down on the floor. Here was the box again. I knew there was a small creatureinside, kept captive against its will and stinking horribly. I tried to call out,hoping to wake myself with the sound of my own voice. No sound left mythroat, and I could not even move my lips. The lid of the box was being liftedagain. I could not turn and run, for I had been running all night and now I had nochoice but to look inside. With great relief I heard the door of my bedroom open,and footsteps across the floor. Someone was sitting on the edge of my bed, rightby my side, and I could open my eyes. My mother sat in such a way as to trapmy arms inside the bedclothes. It was half-past eight by my alarm clock and Iwas going to be late for school. My mother would have been up for two hoursalready. She smelled of the bright-pink soap she used. She said, 'It's time we hada talk, you and I.' She crossed one leg over the other and rested her hands on herknees. Her back, like Julie's, was very straight. I felt at a disadvantage lying onmy back and I struggled to sit up. But she said, 'You lie there a moment.' 'I'mgoing to be late,' I said. 'You lie there a moment,' she repeated with a heavyemphasis on the last word, 'I want to talk to you.' My heart was beating very fast,I stared past her head at the ceiling. I was barely out of my dream. 'Look at me,'she said. 'I want to look at your eyes.' I looked into her eyes and they rovedanxiously across my face. I saw my own swollen reflection. 'Have you looked atyour eyes in a mirror lately?' she said. 'No,' I said untruthfully. 'Your pupils arevery large, did you know that?' I shook my head. 'And there are bags under youreyes even though you've just woken up.' She paused. Downstairs I could hear theothers eating breakfast. 'And do you know why that is?' Again I shook my head,and again she paused. She leaned forward and spoke urgently. 'You know whatI'm talking about, don't you?' My heart thudded in my ears. 'No,' I said. 'Yes youdo, my boy. You know what I'm talking about, I can see you do.' I had no choicebut to confirm this with my silence. This sternness did not suit her at all; therewas a flat, play-acting tone in her voice, the only way she could deliver herdifficult message. 'Don't think I don't know what's going on. You're growing intoa young man now, and I'm very proud you are... these are things your fatherwould have been telling you...' We looked away, we both knew this was not true.'Growing up is difficult, but if you carry on the way you are, you're going to doyourself a lot of damage, damage to your growing body.' 'Damage..." I echoed.'Yes, look at yourself,' she said in a softer voice. 'You can't get up in themornings, you're tired all day, you're moody, you don't wash yourself or changeyour clothes, you're rude to your sisters and to me. And we both know why thatis. Every time...' She trailed away, and rather than look at me stared down at herhands in her lap. 'Every time... you do that, it takes two pints of blood to replaceit.' She looked at me defiantly. 'Blood,' I whispered. She leaned forward and

kissed me lightly on the cheek. 'You don't mind me saying this to you, do you?''No, no,' I said. She stood up. 'One day, when you're twenty-one, you'll turnround and thank me for telling you what I've been telling you.' I nodded. Shestooped over me and affectionately ruffled my hair, and then quickly left theroom. My sisters and I no longer played together on Julie's bed. The gamesceased not long after Father died, although it was not his death that brought themto an end. Sue became reluctant. Perhaps she had learned something at schooland was ashamed of herself for letting us do things to her. I was never certainbecause it was not something we could talk about. And Julie was more remotenow. She wore make-up and had all kinds of secrets. In the dinner queue atschool I once overheard her refer to me as her 'kid brother' and I was stung. Shehad long con- versations with Mother in the kitchen that would break off if Tom,Sue or I came in suddenly. Like my mother, Julie made remarks to me about myhair or my clothes, not gently though, but with scorn. 'You stink,' she would saywhenever there was dis- agreement between us. 'You really do stink. Why don'tyou ever change your clothes?' Remarks like these made me loutish. 'f*ck you,' Iwould hiss, and go for her ankles, deter- mined to tickle her until she died ofexhaustion. 'Mum,' she would shriek, 'Mum, tell Jack!' And my mother wouldcall tiredly from wherever she happened to be,'Jack...' The last time I tickledJulie I waited till Mother was at the hospital, then I slipped on a pair of huge,filthy gardening gloves, last worn by my father, and followed Julie up to herbedroom. She was sitting at the small desk she used for doing homework on. Istood in the doorway with my hands behind my back. 'What do you want?' shesaid in full disgust. We had been quarrelling downstairs. 'Come to get you,' I saidsimply, and spread my enor- mous hands towards her, fingers outstretched. Thesight alone of these advancing on her made her weak. She tried to stand up, butshe fell back in her chair. 'You dare,' she kept saying through her rising giggles.'You just dare.' The big hands were still inches from her and she was writhing inher chair, squealing, 'No... no... no.' 'Yes,' I said, 'your time has come.' I draggedher by the arm on to her bed. She lay with her knees drawn up, her hands raisedto protect her throat. She dared not take her eyes off the great hands which I heldabove her, ready to swoop down. 'Get away from me,' she whispered. It struckme as funny at the time that she addressed the gloves and not me. 'They'recoming for you,' I said, and lowered my hands a few inches. 'But no one knowswhere they will strike first.' Feebly she tried to catch at my wrists but I slid myhands under hers and the gloves clamped firmly round her rib cage, right into thearmpits. As Julie laughed and laughed, and fought for air, I laughed too,delighted with my power. Now there was an edge of panic in her thrash- ingabout. She could not breathe in. She was trying to say 'please', but in my

passed much of her time at home reading in her bedroom, and she never objectedto me lying around in there. She read novels about girls her own age, thirteen orso, who had adventures at their boarding schools. From the local library she bor-rowed large, illustrated books about dinosaurs or volcanoes or the fish of tropicalseas. Sometimes I thumbed through them, looking at the pictures. None of theinformation interested me. I was suspicious of the paintings of dino- saurs, and Itold Sue that no one could really know what they looked like. She told me aboutskeletons and all the clues there were to help in a reconstruction. We argued allafternoon. She knew far more than I, but I was determined not to let her win.Finally, bored and exasperated, we became sulky and left each other alone. Butmost often we talked like conspirators, about the family and all the other peoplewe knew, careful scrutinies of their behaviour and appearance, what they were'really like'. We wondered how ill our mother was. Sue had overheard her tellJulie that she was changing her doctor again. We agreed that our elder sister wasgetting above herself. I did not really think of Sue as a girl now. She was, unlikeJulie, merely a sister, a person. One long Sunday afternoon Julie came in duringa conversation we were having about our parents. I had been saying that secretlythey had hated each other and that Mother was relieved when Father died. Juliesat on the bed next to Sue, crossed her legs and yawned. I paused and cleared mythroat. 'Go on,' Julie said, 'it sounds interesting.' I said, 'It wasn't anything.' 'Oh,'said Julie. She flushed a little, and looked down. Now Sue cleared her throat, andwe all waited. I said foolishly, 'I was just saying I don't think Mum ever reallyliked Dad.' 'Didn't she?' Julie said with mock interest. She was angry. 'I don'tknow,' I muttered. 'Perhaps you know.' 'Why should I know?' There was anothersilence, then Sue said, ' 'Cos you talk to her more than we do.' Julie's angerexpressed itself in mounting silence. She stood up and when she had crossed theroom she turned in the doorway and said quietly, 'Only because you two won'thave anything to do with her.' She paused by the door waiting for a reply, andthen she was gone leaving behind a very faint smell of perfume. The next day,after school, I offered to walk down to the shops with my mother. 'There'snothing to carry,' she said. She was standing in the gloomy hallway, knotting herscarf in the mirror. 'Feel like a walk,' I mumbled. We walked in silence forseveral minutes, then she linked her arm through mine and said to me, 'It's yourbirthday soon.' I said, 'Yeah, pretty soon.' 'Are you excited about being fifteen?''Dunno,' I said. While we waited in a chemist's shop for a prescription for mymother, I asked her what the doctor had said. She was examining a gift-wrappedbar of soap in a plastic dish. She put it down and smiled cheerily. 'Oh, they're alltalking rubbish. I've done with the lot of them.' She nodded towards thepharmaceutical counter. 'As long as I get my pills.' I felt relieved. The

prescription came at last in a heavy, brown bottle which I offered to carry for her.On the way home she suggested we had a little party on my birthday and that Iinvited a few friends from school. 'No,' I said immediately. 'Let's just have thefamily.' For the rest of the way home we made plans, and we were both glad tohave at last something to talk about. My mother remem- bered a party we hadhad on Julie's tenth birthday. I remembered it too, I was eight. Julie had weptbecause someone had told her that there were no more birthdays after you wereten. It had become for a while a family joke. Neither of us mentioned the effectmy father had had on that and all the other parties I could remember. He liked tohave the children stand in neat lines, quietly waiting their turn at some game hehad set up. Noise and chaos, children milling around without purpose, irritatedhim profoundly. There was never a birthday party during which he did not losehis temper with someone. At Sue's eighth birthday party he tried to send her tobed for fool- ing around. Mother intervened, and that was the last of the parties.Tom had never had one. By the time we reached our front gate we had fallensilent. As she fumbled in her handbag for a front-door key I wondered if she wasglad that this time we would be having a party without him. I said, 'Pity Dadcouldn't be... ' and she said, 'Poor dear. He would have been so proud of you.'Two days before my birthday my mother took to her bed. 'I'll be up in time,' shesaid when Sue and I went in to see her. 'I'm not ill, I'm just very, very tired.' Evenas she was speaking to us her eyes were barely open. She had already made acake and iced it with concentric circles of red and blue. In the very centre stoodone candle. Tom was amused by this. 'You're not fifteen,' he shouted, 'you're onlyone when it's your birthday.' Early in the morning Tom came into my room andjumped on my bed. 'Wake up, wake up, you're one today.' At breakfast Juliehanded me, without comment, a small leather pouch which contained a metalcomb and nail scissors. Sue gave me a science fiction novel. On its cover a great,tentacled monster was engulfing a space ship and beyond the sky was black,pierced by bright stars. I took a tray up to my mother's room. When I went in shewas lying on her back and her eyes were open. I sat on the edge of her bed andbalanced the tray on my knees. She sat propped up by pillows, sipping her tea.Then she said, 'Happy birthday, son. I can't speak in the mornings till I've hadsomething to drink.' We embraced clumsily over the teacup she still held in herhand. I opened the envelope she gave me. Inside a birthday card were two poundnotes. On the card was a still-life photograph of a globe, a pile of old leather-bound books, fishing tackle and a cricket ball. I embraced her again and she said'Oops' as the cup wobbled in its saucer. We sat together for a while and shesqueezed my hand. Her own was yellowish and scrawny, like a chicken's foot Ithought. All morning I lay on my bed reading the book Sue had given me. It was

when Sue had told her joke and Mother had laughed, Julie said to Tom, 'Show usall your cartwheel.' We had to move the chairs and plates out of the way so thatTom could fool around on the floor and giggle. Julie made him stop after a whileand then she turned to me. 'Why don't you sing us a song?' I said, 'I don't knowany songs.' 'Yes you do,' she said. 'What about "Greensleeves"?' The very title ofthe song irritated me. 'I wish you'd stop telling people what to do,' I said. 'You'renot God, are you?' Sue intervened. 'You do something, Julie,' she said. WhileJulie and I were talking Tom had taken his shoes off and climbed into bed besideMother. She had put her arm around his shoulder and was watching us as if wewere a long way off. 'Yeah,' I said to Julie, 'you do something for a change.'Without a word Julie launched herself into the space cleared for Tom'scartwheels and suddenly her body was upside down, supported only by herhands, taut and lean and perfectly still. Her skirt fell down over her head. Herknickers showed a brilliant white against the pale brown skin of her legs and Icould see how the material bunched in little pleats around the elastic that clungto her flat, muscular belly. A few black hairs curled out from the white crotch.Her legs, which were together at first, now moved slowly apart like giant arms.Julie brought her legs together again and dropping them to the floor, stood up. Ina confused, wild moment I found myself on my feet singing 'Greensleeves' in atrembling, passionate tenor. When I finished they all clapped and Julie squeezedmy hand. Mother was smiling drowsily. Everything was cleared away quickly;Julie lifted Tom out of the bed, Sue carried away the plates and the remains ofthe cake, and I took the chairs.

4

One hot afternoon I found a sledge-hammer lying con- cealed by weeds and longgrass. I was in the garden of one of the abandoned prefabs, poking around,bored. The building itself had been gutted by fire six months before. I stoodinside the blackened living room where the ceiling had collapsed and thefloorboards burnt away. One par- tition wall remained and in its centre was aserving hatch connected with the kitchen. One of its small wooden doors wasstill on its hinges. In the kitchen broken sections of water pipe and electricalfittings clung to the wall, and on the floor was a smashed sink. In all the roomstall weeds were struggling for the light. Most houses were crammed withimmovable objects in their proper places, and each object told you what to do -here you ate, here you slept, here you sat. But in this burned-out place there wasno order, everything had gone. I tried to imagine carpets, wardrobes, pictures,chairs, a sewing machine, in these gaping, smashed-up rooms. I was pleased by

how irrele- vant, how puny such objects now appeared. There was a mattress inone room, buckled between the blackened, broken joists. The wall wascrumbling away round the window, and the ceiling had fallen in without quitereaching the ground. The people who slept on that mattress, I thought, reallybelieved they were in 'the bed- room. They took it for granted that it wouldalways be so. I thought of my own bedroom, of Julie's, my mother's, all roomsthat would one day collapse. I had climbed over the mattress and was balancingon a ridge of broken wall, thinking about this, when I saw the handle of thesledge- hammer in the grass. I jumped down and seized it. Grey wood-lice hadbeen living under the massive iron head and now they ran backwards andforwards in blind confusion across their little patch of earth. I swung the hammerdown on them and felt the ground shake beneath my feet. It was a good find,probably left by the firemen, or a demolition team. I balanced it over myshoulder and carried it home, wondering what I could usefully smash up. In thegarden the rockery was disintegrating and overgrown. There was nothing to layinto apart from the paving stones, and they were already cracked. I decided onthe cement path-fifteen feet long and a couple of inches thick. It was serving nopurpose. I stripped down to the waist and set to. A little concrete crumbled awayon the first blow, but the next few produced nothing, not even a crack. I rested,and began again. This time, sur- prisingly, a great fissure opened up and a large,satisfying piece of concrete came away. It was about two feet across and heavyto lift. I pulled it clear and rested it against the fence. I was about to pick up thehammer again when I heard Julie's voice behind me. 'You're not to do that.' Shewas wearing a bright-green bikini. In one hand she held a magazine and in theother her sunglasses. Round this side of the house we were in deep shade. Irested the hammer head on the ground between my feet and leaned on thehandle. 'What are you talking about?' I said. 'Why not?' 'Mum said.' I picked upthe hammer and swung it at the path as hard as I could. I looked over myshoulder at my sister who shrugged and was walking away. 'Why?' I called afterher. 'She's not feeling well,' said Julie without turning round. 'She's got aheadache.' I swore and rested the hammer against the wall. I had acceptedwithout curiosity the fact that Mother was rarely out of bed now. She becamebedridden so gradually we hardly commented on it. Since my birthday, twoweeks before, she had not been up at all. We adapted well enough. We took it inturns to take up the tray and Julie shopped on the way back from school. Suehelped her cook and I washed the dishes. Mother lay surrounded by magazinesand library books, but I never saw her reading. Most of the time she dozed in asitting-up posi- tion, and when I came in she would wake up with a little startand say something like, 'Oh, I must have dropped off for a moment.' Because