Bliss (11 page)

'When they went home on the tram that night Little Titch carried the silver cup his mother had won. Although it tar-nished quickly you could still read the inscription years later. It read:
The Shortest Woman, Queenscliff, 1909
.

'Little Titch was both proud and puzzled by the cup. He was proud that the people had smiled at his mother and given her the cup. He was proud that the cup was silver and there, where it was engraved (and he traced the words with his grubby finger), it was gold. But he could not understand, as much as he might think about it, either then or in the months that followed, that his mother should be rewarded for the very thing he, her son, was punished for. People did not kick his mother because she was small, or pull her ears (let them try!) or her nose. They did not pinch her when she was asleep and then laugh at her when she cried. But these things, these punishments, were the daily lot of Little Titch. His brothers were bigger and older, more like his father, and they took it in turns to box his ears and tell him how stupid he was. So when he walked back into the house that day it was not with happiness but with his habitual sense of fear, which was laced with cunning and not a little slyness, and he crept off into the corner under the big grey laundry trough where he would hide, with his dirty little arms around his scabby knees, for hours on end. When this hiding place was discovered, and they were always discovered – under the tank stand, beneath the house, in the smelly space behind the outside toilet – he would find another one.

'He was not lazy. He always tried hard. And later, when his father took up aviation and bought a second-hand Bleriot monoplane, Little Titch would repeatedly break his arm, get-ting it caught by the great wooden propellors which had to be swung by hand.

'But at the time of this story his father did not have aero-planes, or even taxis, but a stables with horses. So the work of the family was all to do with horses, backing them into the shafts, tightening their girths, doing their shoes, mucking out the stables, feeding them, and so on.

'Little Titch tried to do whatever work they gave him but they said he was timid and stupid and only fit for shovelling out the stale straw and shit which he had to do each night after school and often he went to bed unwashed with only the cold smell of horse dung for company.

'The most difficult and troublesome horse in the stables,' Harry said, 'was a gelding named Billy-boy who was not only prone to kick, but also to bite with a ferocity unusual even in a horse. It was nothing for him, one morning when his girth was being tightened, to turn and bite the arm of whichever elder brother was doing it, not just the nasty bruising bite of an ordinary horse, but a ripping horrible bite that drew blood. And there was also the chance, in the confusion, of a kick or two for whoever came to the rescue.

'You could not touch Billy-boy's face, or go behind him, or beside him, and it seemed that most parts of his muscular anatomy had received beatings at one time or another and he was not eager that they be repeated.

'Little Titch's father said that Billy-boy had once killed a man, which was why he had been so cheap, no other person daring to deal with such a brute.

'It's good training for the boys,' the father said. But after two bitings and a nasty kick the mother forbade the bigger boys to go near Billy-boy and the father had to do it himself.

'So, life went on. Billy-boy bit the father, the father hit the boys, and the two big boys hit Little Titch and pulled his nose and boxed his ears and Little Titch looked for places to hide.

'But on this night, this particular night, the brothers could not find him, and in the end the whole family turned out, looking high and low, waking the neighbours calling out: "Little Titch, Little Titch".

'It was the father who found him,' Harry said.

'The horse killed him,' Box said.

'Billy-boy was standing there,' Harry insisted, 'and behind him, right next to his hind leg was Little Titch, his arms around Billy-boy's huge rear leg, his face pressed into the deep black warmth of his flank.

'Come here, Little Titch,' they said, 'come here at once'.

'But Little Titch,' Harry said, 'didn't have to do anything at all because the bastards couldn't touch him,' he said 'and that's the end of the story.'

There was a silence in the room and the two policemen looked the way people look when the lights come on in the cinema. Hastings looked out the window and saw it was raining again. Box yawned and stretched.

'I think you better piss off now,' Hastings said quietly to the story-teller who was looking as perplexed (who was Little Titch?) and as embarrassed as any of them.

As he was escorting Harry out the door Hastings noticed Box, almost absent-mindedly, slip the packet of marihuana into his pocket.

Hastings thought: You silly cunt, but he escorted Harry silently to freedom.

As the taxi drove him home across the bridge, the river below appeared as black as the Styx. Barges carried their carcinogens up river and neon lights advertised their final formulations against a blackening sky.

Harry Joy, his face ghastly with hives, his suit filthy, his chest bleeding, his back sore, lounged sideways in the back seat, drugged with sweet success. The buildings of Hell, glossy, black-windowed, gleaming with reflected lights, did not seem to him unconquerable. It seemed that a person of imagination and resources might well begin to succeed here, to remain dry, warm, and free from punishment. The old optimism flowed through him, warming him like brandy, and allowed him to feel some sympathy for the poor Captives who crowded the darkening streets, holding newspapers over their bowed heads in pitiful defence against the hail which noisily peppered the roof of the cab.

The rewards of originality have not been wasted on him and if he is, at this stage, unduly cocky, he might as well be allowed to enjoy it. So we will not interfere with the taxi driver, who is prolonging his euphoria by driving him the long way home.

Harry sat on the kitchen chair with the towel around him, red Mercurochrome marking the edges of his bleeding scar. There was a strange quiet when Bettina asked the question again.

'Now,' she said, 'tell me what happened.'

He wanted to tell her, but he dare not repeat the elephant story. He looked upwards. He shut his eyes. He sat in total mental blackness and waited for originality to visit him. A lost blow-fly circled the kitchen table until it settled above the door frame where Joel leaned.

The silence was terrible to him.

No new story would arrive. He sat on his hands and looked down at his feet and, after waiting a minute or two, Bettina and Joel went away.

He heard them talking in the next room, their words hidden in a hiss of television.

Harry was meant to start work at the bank on Monday. Then, on the Wednesday before, his mother won money in the lottery. And now, it seemed, his whole life was to change: he was going to art school instead.

He would rather have stayed in the town and worked in the bank. But he was going to art school tomorrow and he pretended to be pleased. Everyone knew. They shook his hand and were proud of him.

When he came home he found his mother dressed in a long gown, deep blue with splendid embroidery on the back and on the edges of its long wide sleeves. She had put her hair up, that jet black hair which was never to be quite so black again. Her eyes shone with excitement and she pulled up her sleeves, trying to keep them out of the cooking.

'Into the dining room, go on.'

She banished him. He sat alone in the dining room which was the living room, the parlour, the study, the drawing room. He sat in a comer in an old armchair and lit the fire.

He did not want to leave. He wanted to stay here. He loved this little room with its black polished-floor boards, the old floral carpet which lifted in ghostly waves in a high wind, the tiny fireplace with its metal grate which had to be blacked every Sunday, the ancient wireless with its vast round dial lit by a soft amber light. He walked around the table which was now covered with ·a spectacular white starched cloth, resplendent with shining silver knives and forks. Two candles sat in the middle of the table and he lit them.

That night his mother showed him things he had never known, as if she were giving him a dress rehearsal for another life. She cooked food of a type he had never eaten, a mousseline, light and delicate, duckling with whole green peppers. And there was wine, a golden wine in an elegant long-necked bottle.

'Ah,' she said, 'wine.' He was overcome with pride at his mother, yet he never asked her how she knew about such things, just as he never asked her who owned the house, when she was married, where the money came to live on, why his father had gone and when he might come back. And yet, that night before he left, she began to talk and he caught glimpses of other worlds, her wants, her loves, her disappointments. He was thrilled but also embarrassed. She drank the wine with pleasure and her eyes glowed with it. She danced like a butterfly through fields of conversation, fluttering for a second over one memory, barely touching it before she was on her way to the next.

'Ah, Harry,' she said, 'your whole life is in front of you. How I envy you. Do you mind your mother envying you? Of course not.'

She insisted on dancing with him. He was giddy from the wine. They whirled around the room and fell over each other. 'Oh Harry,' she collapsed on to the tattered couch, 'I'm so happy for you, so happy for you.'

But had he ever thanked her for sending him to the art school? Years later he tried to remember. Had he ever thought about what she had given up to send him there? She had pushed him on to the train, almost desperately, as if given a second thought she would have taken the money and travelled the world, visited his father at what ever place he was in then, seen the great galleries of Europe, the Uffizi, the Villa Borghese. Did it ever occur to him that she was the one who wanted to go to art school, that she had given him her dream and he had taken it without realizing what it was?

He had asked her if she’d be lonely.

'Lonely?' she laughed. 'How can I be lonely? All my friends are here.'

Yet it wasn't true. She had no close friends. She had people she helped, others she did favours for. There were those she felt sorry for and those she liked a chat with. As time passed pity would be her dominant emotion as she tried to help those she felt sorry for. She took to religion with a new enthusiasm that he soon found almost embarrassing.

Yet that night there was no talk of God, just giddy dancing and golden wine.

'Throw your glass into the fire.'

He didn't understand.

She showed him.

The glasses crashed in ecstasy. The wine sparkled in the lantern light. Outside the wind moaned in sheer pleasure and the great fir trees swayed under the night sky and great white clouds skudded across the heavens and Orion's belt lost its handle.

She found more glasses, long-stemmed and delicate, hidden in the back of a cupboard. She splashed a little wine into one and threw it.

'There,' she said, 'the end. Finito.'

It felt dangerous and thrilling. He followed her example. 'Finito,' he said.

'Now,' she said, and they toasted with two more glasses. 'Now, for both of us, a new stage.'

He did not understand. He looked at his mother's glowing eyes, her laughing lips and felt nervous, alone in territory he did not recognize.

'Now,' she sipped the wine and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. 'Now, you go to be an artist and I,' she emptied the glass and hurled t into the fire, 'I go to polish floors.'

'Oh no.' He stood up hugged her. 'Oh, no.'

But she did not look unhappy. She was bright, almost feverish. 'Oh yes,' she said, 'Oh Harry I want to. I am happy, happy, happy.'

'You don't want to polish floors.'

'Polish, polish,' she waved her hand. 'Not just polish. I am trying to explain, Harry, this is new stage. I have planned it. Harry, I am going to be good.'

She was crying now but still smiling. Tears sprang to his eyes in sympathy.

'No, no,' she said, 'don't cry. I'm happy. I'm crying because I'm happy. This is my new life. I'm going to be good.'

He did not understand.

'I promised God,' she smiled, 'if I won the lottery.' The wine was drunk. His childhood over. Few things ever happened afterwards to match this moment of tingling promise where Harry and his mother had trembled on the edge of life.

Alex Duval spent his Saturday morning as usual. He was the only person on the floor occupied by Joy, Kerlewis & Day and so allowed himself some laziness in dress. His grey gardening pullover was unravelling at the neck and a bright red shirt shone through the holes in the elbows. As he walked along the corridor to his office he carried two Italian doughnuts (the kind with a big blob of apricot jam hidden in the middle) and triple espresso coffee. Soon he would go down for another coffee and he'd probably (certainly) buy another doughnut or two.

The last of the corridor's neon lights finished its nervous flickering as he entered his office. He pulled a face at the stale aroma of pipe tobacco and placed his coffee and doughnuts on his large clean desk. He took from the top drawer a little L-shaped metal key which he now used to unlock the double-glazed windows. It was raining. He sniffed the air, yawned, and stretched.

Today, as usual, Alex Duval would write his second set of conference reports. A conference report is written in an advertising agency any time the agency and its client decide to take action on anything. It can record a budget allocation, the acceptance of an advertisement, approvals and rejections of media schedules, marketing strategies; all the business of a client and the agency's role in it is documented and then kept for up to seven years. In disputes between clients and their agencies, the conference report is regarded as a binding document.

And every Saturday morning for the last ten years Alex Duval, Account Director, had sat at his desk and written and typed a set of conference reports in which his role, seen by the revolutionary investigators he imagined would one day sit in judgement on him, would be blameless.