Dead Babies (20 page)

"I swear, Quentin," said Andy yearningly, "unless some normal birds start coming here again, I'm going to get going on those fuckin' doves."

"Ah, but Andy—they're doves," said Quentin.

"They're still fuckin'
birds,
aren't they? What difference does that make?"

"But they're holy birds."

"Yeah, and I bet they read the Bible and do quid-a-jobs and never say 'fuck.' "

"Now, now, Andrew. Now, now."

For Quentin and Andy were out killing birds in the

garden. This recreation had recently come to carry a sense

of strain, particularly as regards Adorno. In the golden age of their first few weeks at the house, Andy would rise before six, gulp down some Irish coffee, and prowl into the garden
:
with the Webley rifle for stealthy two-hour sessions, often claiming to have dispatched between twenty and thirty of the pests in a single morning. Two months of this and aerial word got round that birds were
non grata
at Appleseed Rectory, and soon the little visitors ceased to wake Adorno with their song. Spiritedly, Andy got into the habit of emptying large bags of Swoop, Airies, and Wingmix on the lawn last thing at night, a wheeze initially so successful that he would sometimes find it unnecessary even to leave his room, picking the massed creatures off from his window. (If reproached by an Appleseed female about this policy Andy would counter, depending on his mood, that birds weren't cosmic and were therefore expendable, or alternatively that such crusades restored the precious bond of blood reciprocity between animal and man, or alternatively that it taught the greedy little fuckers a lesson.) Later still, of course, the most famished robins in England would give the Rectory lawn a mile-wide berth—despite the cream, dripping, pate, and freshly exhumed worms that Andy would array to tempt them to his green preserve. More recently still, in the early mornings, Andy could be glimpsed, a solitary and enigmatic figure, pacing the garden with his gun, forever gazing up in mute appeal at the indifferent skies.

"Well, they do live in the church," pursued Quentin gently, "and they are virtually the property of the village. Best to leave the doves alone, Andy."

"Yeah, well. And I suppose if I did get to work on them the fuckin' locals would only start to bitch about it. I just don't like the way they come down here every day so flash. As if they owned the fuckin' place . . . Well, I'll leave them alone for now but they'd just better not push their luck, is all."

"That's a sagacious Andy. Must maintain good relations with the pez. Have Lucy last night?"

"Nah— Just let her mouth-fuck me."

"I see. Was Diana pleased."

"She didn't get to know about it. I outsmarted her again."

"And tell me," Quentin asked him, "did you have Roxe-anne too?"

"Course."

"How do you mean, 'course'?"

"Well—anyone could tell she was going to make a play for me. For a start she was eye-fucking me all night—at that
booze bar and stuff." Andy gestured across the garden. "A field-fuck," he said.

"Really, Andy. You and your fucks. What was it like— tolerably enjoyable?"

"Nah. Nothing special. Okay. Nothing special. You've fucked her, surely?" asked Andy, slightly taken aback.

"No; now you come to mention it, I don't believe I have. You see, Andy, when I ran into these people I was, shall we say, the houseguest of a certain screen actress, and so Roxeanne seemed, well, a tiny bit superfluous."

"Which one?"

Quentin shrugged and turned away. "Margot Make-piece ..."

Andy's lemur eyes bulged.
"
Bull
shit,"
he said. "No!"

"Oh yes."

"The one that— Can she? Right up the—?"

"Oh yes."

"Jesus."

"Anyway, we digress. With Roxeanne— I trust you acquitted yourself well?"

"I hit colossal form," said Andy.

"And Marvell and Skip? Did they try to get in on what I'm sure was a splendid act?"

"What, those fags? You're kidding. They're smarter than that."

"Don't underestimate them. They're peculiarly persistent. And persistently peculiar."

"Mm?"

"In a way, I'm beginning to regret having asked them. It doesn't seem to be going markedly well up to now. They've changed since I knew them. And they're generally so ... so different, don't you feel?"

"The fuck, they're just American, that's all. Look, there's one!"

Andy was referring to an airborne speck well into the middle distance. Even as he spoke he lifted the gun and fired. They watched the little slug of metal die in a slow, plaintive arc; three hundred yards beyond, the dot winged its way

purposefully on. Lear-like imprecations fled from Andy's

mouth.

On Quentin's suggestion, Andy sought solace in peppering the Tuckle drainpipes and windowpanes for a quarter of an
hour. But he soon grew bored and pitched the gun bitterly onto the grass. There was a dejected silence.

"It's going to be a hot mother today," said Quentin, resting a thin hand on Andy's shoulder and wincing at the sky.

"Yeah." Overhead, a DC 70 strained upward through the blue air. "Take me to America," Andy murmured.

"Come on, kid," said Quentin. "Let's go in."

33: BUT WHAT'S PERFECT

The Whitehead had beguiled the early morning in a sweaty fight with the garage toolbox, restoring and partly refashioning a pair of old platforms, platforms which he had worn every day between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one until —lined with asbestos and bakelite though the boots were— they had gone critical on him practically in the course of an afternoon . . . emptying lecture halls, toppling freshmen, razing flowerboxes, and asphyxiating charladies in his wake. Keith had had no choice but to seal the footwear hermetically that night and swathe them in dead towels at the bottom of his trunk. He was meanwhile required to go to college in Clark's sandals for a month, as he saved the necessary money —by going without such things as transport, warmth, food and drink—for some new supports.

Little Keith had nailed fist-thick, roughly-hewn wooden slabs to the soles of the rescued boots, chipped them flush with hammer and chisel and blackened them with polish. It was a painstaking and in many respects an imaginative piece of work; but it was his most daring reconstruction job to date—and Keith was no cobbler.

In his room, Whitehead placed a two-pence piece between his teeth and drained his legs into the hot holes. He levered himself—ever so cautiously—from the bed, in order to exert his full weight on the palpitating platforms. Gradually, gradually ...

A tenth of a second later Keith was an invertebrate puddle on the floor of his room. "So far, so good," he croaked. White-head was, after all, fairly experienced in these matters and, even as he lay on the rug, twitching to the black anguish that coursed through his body, he was reasonably sanguine. He had a shrewd idea—thanks—of the sort of state his feet
were in these days; he knew, at any rate, that they opened up whole new worlds of semantic reach to the epithet
raw.
(A drunken dietary consultant had once advised him, unofficially but with real concern, simply to have them off—and quickly.) And yet little Keith knew also what they, and he, could master and endure. Presently, he was confident, a soothing elixir of sweat and blood would begin to soften the chips of ruptured cardboard, would begin to lubricate the craters of the scored heel, would begin to deliquesce the stiffened creases of the biting vinyl. True, it would not compromise the bent nail ends which had already eased themselves a quarter of an inch into his hooves, but—

"But what's perfect," Keith asked out loud of his floor rug, "in this life of ours? As long as they don't squelch," he continued, reaching for a pillow to scream into, "just so long as they don't squelch, then I'm a happy man. Then I'm walking on air."

Ten minutes later Keith was on his feet, tears of pain running unhindered down his cheeks. He took an exploratory step, allowed his chest to billow, growled mightily deep in his throat, and willed on his body a species of control. Through his wall slit he espied Quentin and Andy ambling back toward the house. Stripped to the waist, Andy was gesticulating stylishly at the wholesome garden. Tugged at by Keith's tears his brown body swam beautifully through the knobbled windowpane.

"You can get used to anything, really, I suppose," White-head muttered.

Corrosion seeped up his ankles like rising water. It then occurred to Keith that if he had to wear these foot engines for as long as (say) a week, the loss of ectoplasm would more than discount the artificial gain in inches: with his gory shin stumps wedged into six-inch lifts, he'd be four-foot-eleven all over again. But it was unlikely that he would have to wear anything that long. How fortunate. For this small blessing Whitehead gave laconic thanks.

34: breakfast

"Giles! What are you doing up? Have you been
out?"

The Mandarin on his lap, Giles was sitting at the kitchen
:
table, a cup of coffee cooling in front of him. Without curiosity he returned Andy's stare.

"Seeing my mother in London, actually."

"Yeah? How's she?"

Giles reached for the coffee cup. It got as far as his chin before he lurched forward violently and replaced it with a lingering, wristless hand. Frowning at the room, he took out his hip flask. "Who? My mother? Oh, she's mad. Gosh, she's so mad now."

"What she want?"

"She wants to come to the special Institute in Potter's Bar. So I can see her more often."

"The Blishner place?" said Andy. "What's she going in there for?"

"So I can see her more often."

"No, you little . . . What are they going to
do
to her there?"

"Actually, I don't know. But, gosh, she's jolly mad now."

"Do you get more cash?"

When Giles showed no loss of attention but no obvious interest in replying, Andy waltzed over to the dresser (on which numerous mugs were hooked and against which Diana leaned), taking an apple from the oriental bowl there. He placed the fruit in his mouth whole, chewed vigorously and swallowed—a habit of his.

(Giles averted his appalled gaze.)

"You've been out shooting birds in the garden, I suppose," said Diana unaffectionately.

"Oh, you haven't, have you, darling?" appealed Celia to her husband.

"The fuck we have," said Andy. "The little bastards won't come anywhere near here any more."

(Quentin crossed the kitchen and took Celia lightly in his arms.)

"I put," Andy went on, "I put stuff out for them—worms and stuff—but that's not good enough for them. Dripping, stuff like that. But do they come anywhere near the place? Not them,
oh
no."

(Diana lit a cigarette and sighingly exhaled.)

"I mean, how's a guy supposed to see any decent action around here if the flash little shits won't come near the place? Those doves . . . coming down here every day so casual.”

Andy's face darkened. "They'd just better watch themselves is all I'm saying."

Quentin was about to assure Celia that, nonsense, he was sure Andy had no intention of doing any such thing, when little Keith merged slowly through the doorway, his eyelids dark with pain.

"Good morning, campers," said Whitehead.

Keith's voicebox had been under orders to say this with volume and gusto. But the words had evaporated dryly from his mouth. "Good morning, campers," he said again. No improvement.

"Why, it's little Keith," said Andy. "Keith, good Christ, are you dying?"

"Good Lord, Keith," said Quentin with unfeigned alarm. "Here, quick, you'd better sit down."