Burning Boy (Penguin Award Winning Classics), The (14 page)

‘Just as long as you're getting an education.' He winks at her and wonders why she suddenly switches off. Daughters though are an aphrodisiac. He takes another lichee and pulps it on his tongue; and thinks that he might need to visit Stephanie tonight. (Stephanie owns a boutique in town but lives twenty kilometres out in the hills, which makes her less available than he'd like. She is ‘the mistress'. Josie is ‘the wife'. The captions are meant to be a joke but somehow they're not funny all the time.)

Tom pushes back his plate and goes into the lounge. ‘Get lost,' he says to the cat in his chair. Dribble 1 is his name for her. The dog – asleep in his basket – is Dribble 2.

‘Come here, Heloise,' Josie says, ‘there's room for you,' wedging the animal between her thigh and the arm of her chair. The old cat purrs, is musical, contented again, and lives up to Tom's name for her. (Once there had been a companion, Abelard – ‘Josie likes to show her credentials,' – but he had kept his male ways in spite of his doctoring, and failed to settle down in the new house. Went over the wall, became a bush cat, competed with hedgehogs in the night for his saucer of milk. He had a fatal encounter with a van taking a load of children to the Baptist camp. The weeping and wailing on that day. ‘He's in cats' heaven. They prayed for him.')

Stella brings her parents a brandy. Belinda and Duncan, kneeling on a mat far away in the room, start a game of Trivial Pursuits. Tom reads the paper and Josie reads a novel half a sentence at a time – comes across the words ‘naked hideous male gratification'. Goes back and reads with more care. Killing gratifies in this case, but the phrase, she decides, is a beauty, and she looks at Tom's face to see what she can discover there. She regards herself as a connoisseur of male expressions, and is of course world expert on Tom Round's. His face is like a spring, she tells her friends, and new things come bubbling up all the time. There's no way he can put a cover on, he's too self-centred. ‘It's a pretty muddy spring too.' Sexual thoughts make his mouth swell and his eyes bulge. Power thoughts, gaining thoughts, pleasure in praise, anger, disappointment, kindness, love – she'll allow those last two, although they're nastily adulterated – aesthetic imaginings, mathematical intuitions, balancing calculations, all show in their various ways on his face. She's reconciled to him, in a small way, by what she calls his architectural thoughts. She believes, and has warned him, that they're starting to grow weak, but there's a lack of evidence and she's forced to admit there's no reason why a selfish man, nasty person, inadequate individual, utter bastard, poor weak sod, people-eater, should not design beautiful houses. Josie finds his houses beautiful and knows from experience they're marvellous to live in. Her marriage is over, she understands, but she's not leaving this house for Tom Round or anyone. It's like a child, she thinks, and God knows I'm better at loving things than he is.

She is not, in fact, better at loving the house. Tom loves it too, in all the obvious ways, but also in a way that lifts him and makes him soar. He goes beyond possessiveness and pleasure and reaches a condition of knowing. He describes himself – it's a form of self-praise – as ‘a pretty basic individual, no crap', but claims to be, in his craft or art, ‘a one-off job'. ‘I tell you man, when I do
this
not
that
it's because I bloody
know
.' Nobody else knows, not in the territory he works, and he won't be interfered with. Oh, he'll take advice, even take instruction, in practical matters – durability, stress and strain, etc. – but if someone gives a sideways look and says, ‘Well, I don't know', over a matter of design Tom will stamp on him like a bug. He isn't good with clients, wants them to keep out of his way; has lost a number of jobs because of it, but doesn't care. ‘They want
a bloody cave, they can hire Alley Oop.' There's a time when he soars away from cares of this sort, and the hard engineering of his job (though he likes that too). It doesn't happen every time, and he's savage then (punched a builder's foreman down a flight of steps), but when it does, Tom loses bodily sensation and lives in mind in a state of bliss. Time vanishes. Nothing holds sway over him; he is, in his own phrase ‘a free spirit', engaged in ‘the pure creative act'. He only talks about it when he's drunk; and makes no sense; but opens the experience, ‘memory box', when he's in his solitary mood, feeling the pressures of mortality, oppressed by betrayals of the body, sorry for himself – but only a little – needing to pick up what's special to him. Then, after he has restored himself, gets basic again; flings himself about, makes a lot of noise, and, Josie says, ‘crunches a few people up'. (She was looking at a book of Blake's etchings one day and came across Kronos devouring his sons. ‘That's Tom,' she said.)

But he loves. He loves his houses; and this one above all the rest. Believes he reached a perfect marriage with himself when he designed it, and says (drunk again), ‘That's my baby. Who needs kids?'

Now he puts his paper down and weighs the pleasures of sitting here against the pleasures of Stephanie. He spent the whole of yesterday with her in his boat, trying the motor out on a long run up the coast, and he scarcely laid a hand on her. Self control of that sort deserves a reward. But who needs a twenty-kilometre drive after dinner? Why doesn't she get a flat in town instead of playing little Miss Self-Sufficiency in the hills? Why can't she live right here with him, in his house – and Josie could be cook in the kitchen and bring them breakfast in bed.

Tom finds his wife watching him.

‘You should get a new face, Tom. That one's a traitor to the cause.'

‘I hope you two aren't going to fight,' Stella says. She has been watching her father too, but doesn't have Josie's skill in reading him, and makes her comment sharp because she's annoyed at not understanding. Her mother has told her about Stephanie (hasn't told Duncan and Belinda). Stella is pleased – thinks the affair a safety-valve; but wants more information, wants everything, for reasons only she and Mandy know. Quarrels are unproductive though, quarrels are a pain.

‘I don't mind, but the pair of you are so unoriginal.'

‘I deny that,' Josie says, laughing.

‘The best insults improve with age.' Tom.

‘Pipe down,' Belinda calls. ‘We can't concentrate.'

‘Sorry, love.' Josie picks up her novel, but doesn't read. Listens to their questions and is surprised by how much they don't know. Don't they know the Friendly Ghost is Caspar? Has so much time gone by? Caspar is the friend of the middle-aged now. She feels the loose skin at the angle of her jaw, then bunches it and wonders how much a surgeon would take off to make her young.

It is Tom's turn to watch. ‘Don't do it, Jose. I like you the way you are.'

Her annoyance is increased because it's true. Tom has a taste for women passing out of their prime (see Stephanie, see Norma), and likes especially faces that had once been beautiful. He claims to be a face fetishist; bum and boobs, he says, can't compete with mouth and eye; and nothing brings him on more than skin loosening its hold or muscle just beginning to lose tone. The hint of ruin makes him sad and cruel. He likes his women short of time and desperate. Either that or starting out, eager, untried. But it's still the face he likes, even when the bodies are sensational. He likes to see fear and surprise.

Josie knows all this, and knows why Tom still wants her now and then. She decides to rise above him, for the children's sake, and goes into the kitchen and stacks the dishwasher, thinking about their mental growth; tries to penetrate the mystery of where they are going. Mandy will be a doctor, and a gynaecologist too if she has her way, and Stella a lawyer, specializing where property and power hand each other upwards step by step. They're both quite precise about what they want – but the women they will be remain obscure. Will they be happy? Will they hurt and be hurt? Their bodies will come to that inevitable sag and decline – not important – but what will happen to their minds, and who will be in there, behind the face, and will that person survive? None of her children has the openness she wished for; none of them is
sunny
; they are, she thinks, a slithery lot. Then takes the judgement back about Belinda – leaving Duncan aside, a special case. Belinda has a sunny side to her. Josie hears her laughing in the big room, with a bell-bird lilt, and a caw and squawk of ruthlessness. She has beaten Duncan.
Josie hears him laugh. It has no effect on her for a moment, then makes her skin prickle and contract. She has not heard Duncan laugh since before his accident.

She goes to the door and watches them. Belinda is packing up the game and Duncan lies on the rug (fiery orange!) and grins at her. ‘How did you know that one about the cubit?'

‘I didn't. I read your mind.'

‘If I play this game a few more times I'll know all the answers.'

‘Skite. I'll still beat you.'

‘The Egyptian cubit was 20.64 inches. The Roman was 17.4. The English was 18.'

‘That wasn't on the card.'

‘I read it somewhere.'

Tom says, ‘The Egyptians used the cubit when they built the pyramids.' Josie sees he's jealous of Duncan's knowledge. ‘I'll take you to see the pyramids one day, Bel. They'll blow your mind.'

The girl looks at him with a tightening of her face, as though she's shrinking him and taking measure, then fits the board in the box and clamps the lid on. The hole in what he's said, where Duncan should be, appals Josie; she can't measure him, he's large and horrible.

‘Come here you two,' she says to Duncan and Belinda. ‘I haven't done your heights since … when was it, Bel? Ages ago.' She must be quick and get Duncan back in the family. She goes to the kitchen, takes pencil and ruler from a drawer, waits by the door into the laundry. ‘Get a wriggle on.' Belinda comes in with Duncan in tow. A glance at her face: she understands.

‘You first, Dunc. Look, look at this,' – a little screech, she woodpeckers her fingernail on the jamb – ‘I haven't done you since,' reads the pencilled date, ‘my God, September 1984.' She takes his shoulders, bossy, rough, cancelling significance from the pre-burn date. She lays the ruler on his head and levels it with her eye. ‘Heels in. Against the wall.'

‘You've got the ruler sloping downwards, Mum,' Belinda says.

‘How's that? Right?' She marks the wood and Duncan steps away. He has grown two inches, more than two, and she wonders if his burned skin grows at the normal rate – grows at all? His scarring, which she has seen so close a moment ago, strikes at her and almost makes her cry out. She takes an exact measurement. ‘Two and a quarter inches. That's …'

‘Six centimetres,' Duncan says.

‘And it makes you – five feet eight and a half.'

‘Sure,' he says. He knows what she is up to. He's aware of Tom watching from the door.

‘You'll end up a six-footer,' Josie says.

They all know he won't grow that tall. Tom gives a muted, ‘Poof!' Now that it's Belinda's turn he walks across the kitchen.

‘I'll never grow tall,' Belinda wails.

‘There's nothing wrong with five foot four. You've got years of growing anyway.'

‘I won't be as tall as Stell and Mandy.'

Duncan goes away, unseen. Tom says, ‘Short girls are the best. Nice strong waists and round behinds. I can't stand these praying-mantis women.' He extends angle-jointed arms, grabs and munches.

‘Oh, Dad.'

‘At least you won't end up with a boyfriend shorter than you. Hey, did I tell you what I saw in the car park today? This girl and bloke came out of the health food shop and she was six feet tall, no kidding, she could have been an All-American basketball guard, and he was five foot three, he came up about as high as her shoulder. They had their arms around each other and every couple of minutes they'd stop and have a kiss.'

‘What's wrong with that?' Josie says.

‘He had to put his face up.' Tom is filled with glee. ‘And she had to bend down. Can you imagine, for God's sake, a man putting his face up to be kissed? Hee hee hee.'

He makes her feel a little sick: the rancour, the ill-wishing, the glee. Surely, somewhere along the way, he learned them, but now they seem as natural as crying and laughing in other people. There's a rage in him to hold Tom Round intact. Other men especially seem to threaten him by simply existing. She looks at his grinning teeth and is glad those two front choppers are acrylic. (The builder's foreman came running back and gave Tom the Liverpool kiss.)

‘I won't measure you Tom, you're shrinking.'

‘Ha bloody ha.'

‘I'm going to have a swim before my homework.' Belinda.

‘It's too soon after dinner.'

‘No it's not. By the time I get my togs on it'll be half an hour.'

‘I'll come in with you,' Tom says.

‘I thought you had your water-sports yesterday.' It has no effect, he takes attacks of this sort as a sexual compliment.

She half-reads her novel again, listening to them splash in the pool. First Belinda rescues a bee, which Tom tells her she might as well squash because it won't get back to its hive in the dark; and if it lasts till morning and goes back it will have lost its swarm scent and the guards will treat it as an intruder and sting it to death. Belinda finds that cruel. She puts the bee on a leaf – ‘Give it a last meal of honey' – and when they're in the pool Josie sees, through the green corridor of the conservatory, Duncan come from somewhere in the dark and sit in the shadows watching them.

The old dachshund, Sos, drags himself from his basket and waddles through the room with his belly brushing the floor and stands by the pool making half-hearted yaps.