The Insect Farm (12 page)

“Don’t worry, Roger. As I said, no one is suggesting that now. Nothing is going to happen to the insect farm. It is safe and you are safe.”

I wondered whether I should tell Roger what the police had suggested, and then I realized that there was no point in
doing so. Already he was confused by what I was saying, and I could see that to go into the reason I was asking would only make matters worse. However, I did wonder: if the thought hadn’t come from Roger, where had it come from?

“Bad enough to have had to move it” – as so often, his train of thought was now fixed in one direction and ploughing forward – “let alone the idea of getting rid of it altogether. That would be over my dead body, that would. That would be the end of the world.”

“Don’t worry about it, Roger. No one is going to scrap the insect farm. In fact,” I said, “let’s go and have a look at it this afternoon.”

* * *

After weeks of searching for a suitable place, we had eventually alighted on the perfect location for Roger’s pride and joy, on a patch of allotments not more than about two hundred yards along the road from our flat. I had used some of the money we inherited from Dad to buy a new shed, bigger and better than the one it had previously been housed in, and probably only just a bit smaller than a standard single garage. With a bit of help from me and from a kindly older bloke who worked on the allotments, Roger had filled it with new shelving, and we had carefully transported his prized possession to its new home.

“I hope you aren’t breeding anything in there that’s going to eat my bloody cabbages,” said Mr Bolton, as he and I
manhandled one of Roger’s larger glass tanks from the back of a hired Ford Transit into the shed.

“No,” said Roger, and pointed to a mangy Labrador that never seemed to wander farther than three feet from its master’s side. “But we do have a few that would be very happy to come and eat that dog of yours.” He giggled and put his hand across his mouth, as though unsure whether or not he had gone too far. Old Mr Bolton looked puzzled until I put on a convincing laugh and finally he got the joke.

“I can see I am going to have to keep an eye on you,” he said.

Roger and I did a lot of work together in the new shed, and you could say that immersing ourselves in it helped to heal some of the wounds we each were nursing in our own ways. We constructed a whole series of different containers of every shape and size to accommodate his worms and insects. Some had glass sides; others were wooden tubs or boxes. We had access to a tap and there was even a mains electricity supply provided through the goodwill of the headmaster of the primary school which was situated next door to the allotment site. The expanded space in the garage made Roger ambitious, and over the coming months he developed all sorts of plans to keep and to breed a still-greater range of exotic varieties.

On evenings when we did not visit the farm, Roger would sit at our kitchen table and pore through magazines and catalogues containing a whole world of information about bugs and beetles and flies and worms from all parts of the
globe. He would spend hours studying the appearance and behaviour of this or that newly discovered genus, and tell me in the greatest of detail what made each one of them unique. He would meticulously complete order forms and then queue up at the post-office counter to send off for some new addition to his collection, and then spend more hours planning how it would be housed, fed and temperature-controlled. From time to time we would receive through the post a sturdy cardboard box containing a selection of leaves and twigs and, on closer inspection, a little colony of bugs of one kind or another. Even someone with no interest at all would have to admit that Roger’s collection of worm and insect habitats was impressive.

“Why do you keep all these different species in different containers?” I asked him. “Don’t they all have to live together when they are out in their natural habitats?” I was peering through the semi-darkness into the glass tanks that were lined up in rows at eye level. Some were filled with soil and others with bits of trees and other vegetation arranged on gravel.

“They do, but if you leave them to themselves, they fight.” Roger was doing his favourite thing, which was pottering about, placing his fingertips against the cages and his eyes as close to the glass as he could get. Left to himself, Roger could and would spend every hour of the day and night doing just that, watching his creation.

“But isn’t that the natural order of things? If some of them die, that’s their natural state.”

“It is, but I love them, so why wouldn’t I try to do what’s best for them?”

“That’s good, Roger,” I said, “Truly you are a good shepherd to your flock.”

Roger gave me the look he adopted when he passed over the barrier between what he understood and what he did not, but it was a smile which sometimes left me with an impression that he knew so much more than I did. About everything.

Chapter Twelve

Harriet used to come to see us in London as often as she reasonably could, and I tried not to underestimate how difficult that was for her. She was studying hard and also she was obliged to accept as many offers as she could get for her quartet to play at functions. She and her group had become personal favourites of the Vice-Chancellor, and so he tended to invite them to play at any social gathering organized by the university. These events were not especially well paid, but often they would involve the bigwigs from the city and the local council, just exactly the sort of people who organized similar functions, and so the reputation of the quartet might spread.

Quite a few of these engagements fell on weekdays, but others were at weekends, so although gigs helped us to be able to afford her visits to London, they also sometimes got in the way of her having the time to make the journey. And of course with Roger to think about, there was no real possibility that I could visit her.

It was not often that we would quarrel or even disagree. For the most part we were both content to know that the other was as keen for us to be together as we were ourselves, and that the only barriers were practical. There was no lack of
will on either side. Still it would be foolish to deny that I felt the occasional knot of resentment. This happened most often when we had a provisional arrangement for her to travel, but then a reasonably paid opportunity to perform came up at the last minute and she had to cancel. On these occasions, when I had looked forward to seeing her and had built myself up for the joy of it, the disappointment could be acute. Our conversations at these times would be agonizing.

“Jonathan.”

“Yes.”

“About this weekend…”

That was all she needed to say, and I could feel my stomach tightening. And the worst of it was that, while I would know that she was every bit as unhappy about it as I was, and that she would have been dreading raising the subject, still – and this says something unattractive about the human condition – still, I could not stop myself from being grumpy about it.

“What about this weekend?” As if I didn’t know.

“We’ve been asked to play a gig at short notice for the VC’s conference, and the others can make it…”

“Yes. But obviously you can’t make it, because we have a long-standing plan for you to come here this weekend. I’ve made arrangements. I’ve bought extra food. We are expecting you.”

A pause.

“Don’t worry. I’ll tell them that I can’t do it.” Another pause. “Jonathan?”

“What?”

“I said I’ll tell them I can’t do it.”

My indignation was a pendulum in full swing, accelerating downwards and then meeting the resistant gravity of the guilt I instantly felt about having given her a hard time. This would send the thing with equal and opposing velocity in the other direction, propelled on the wave of shame and regret that I had been less understanding and supportive than I should have been. At about the midway point on my journey back to reason I would begin to reverse.

“Obviously I am not saying that.”

“What are you saying then?”

“I’m saying that of course you have to accept. You’d be letting the others down.”

“And so you are implying that I would rather let you down than to let Brendan and the others down?” Harriet’s response was as quick as a flash. “You know that’s not what it’s about. It’s about the money. If we start to turn down gigs like this, they’ll find someone else to play, and then we might not get the chances in the future.”

“I hadn’t mentioned Brendan. And why is it more about letting him down than it is about letting down Martin and Jed?”

“Only because he was the one who got us this particular gig. It’s not about Brendan more than it’s about anyone else. You know that. Don’t be stupid.”

I did know that in my head, and that I was indeed being stupid, but somehow I had never got around to knowing it
in my stomach. So every mention of Brendan carried with it a nasty little twinge of pain in my guts, like a corkscrew being inserted and then twisted in my flesh.

“OK, OK, uncle,” I said. At last the swingometer had reached its final extreme. I was conquered. “It’ll just mean a few extra helpings of pepperoni pizza for Roger and me, and while you are slaving over a hot flute on Saturday, Roger will be enjoying a very nice bottle of cola, and I will be enjoying a very nice bottle of claret.”

“My loss then,” she said, and we were friends again.

On average I reckon that Harriet and I saw each other one weekend a month during term time, and then obviously we were together all during the end-of-term vacations. The quartet did one or two London-based performances during holidays, and at Easter Brendan arranged for them to play in the market at Covent Garden. The four of them set up their music stands in one of the lower tiers of shops, where the sound they made could bounce off sharp corners and around the colonnades, echoing in and out of doorways and walkways and market stalls and café furniture. The effect was wonderful, and Roger and I went along to ambush the foreign tourists who may have thought they were getting a free concert, but who looked appropriately embarrassed when asked for a contribution. It was a great success – so much so that we ended up staying far longer than we had originally intended.

“I’ll get some coffee,” I said, and Roger came with me as I headed off towards the greasy spoon inside the covered
market which still catered for the traders. On the way there I counted the money and reckoned that we had earned enough to justify a small celebration. “Go back and ask them if they want anything to eat,” I told Roger. He did, but I think he must have got lost on the way, because it took him all of ten minutes to return. When he finally turned up he seemed a bit confused and disorientated, and all he could tell me was that everyone seemed to have everything they needed.

Having Roger collecting money on such occasions was a gas – basically because very few of the people he tapped up for a donation could work out whether he was acting or was not quite all there. We raised £28 that day – minus £4 between us for coffee and doughnuts – split four ways, this was a very good take for the times.

Weekends with Harriet were usually wonderful, and were marred only by the fact that we always knew that our time together was limited and therefore we needed it to be perfect. We didn’t have enough of it to do a lot of the routine stuff that is as much a part of a decent marriage as the highlights. The grocery shopping, the going to the launderette, the hanging out. Because our hours together were so limited, we seemed to feel that we had to pack them with pleasurable things, and that would sometimes cause a strain.

One thing we never disagreed about was having Roger around. He used to go to the day centre on Saturday mornings until noon, which meant that Harriet and I could have some time to ourselves. I would walk with him down to the bus,
and then come back to the flat with only the now constant presence of Olly the Siamese cat competing for attention. I’d make tea and bring it to bed, and then Harriet and I would spend a couple of hours making love and catching up with each other’s lives.

Those times were among the most wonderful I have ever known in my life. In some ways I knew her so well, and yet in others she was a stranger to me. We had the comfort of familiarity, but also the joy of rediscovery. So much was happening to her – she was learning so much, experiencing new stuff, but little of it was very relevant to me. She was growing in her own world. The result was that in small ways she was a slightly different person every time I met her. She had learnt more, discovered more, while my routine was more or less static. Yet when we made love there was none of the hesitation or trepidation which goes with a new romance. We were instantly utterly at home, with no inhibitions, no holding back. I felt like a man crawling through the desert towards an oasis, but when I got there, the oasis was not a mirage, but a wonderful, absorbing, revitalizing, regenerative immersion.

After kissing and drinking tea and lovemaking and more tea and then some more lovemaking, it would be lunchtime and one or other of us would take the short walk to meet the bus which dropped Roger off. He would always be delighted to see Harriet, they would kiss and embrace, and then we would all have some food together, and as quickly as possible
he would want to head off down to the allotments to check up on the insect farm. Either Harriet or I would usually walk down there with him; we knew that he was safe and absorbed when he was there, and so it gave us the chance to do as much of the ordinary stuff as we could do in the time. Harriet would bring me up to date with her news, which inevitably would centre around the stresses and pressures of studying.

“They expect us to do three essays a week,” she said, “and then one of us has to read out their work in the seminar and all the others pick it to pieces right there in front of you.”

I would be treated to a blow-by-blow account of the projects she was being set, the essays she had to write, the seminars she had to lead, the assessments she had to endure and the exams she had to prepare for. To listen to Harriet, you would easily gain the impression that every waking hour was spent with her books and with music practice. However, I knew enough from my own experience in Newcastle that, even for the most conscientious of students, it really wasn’t possible to work the whole time, and there was plenty of it left over for socializing. At those times my mind would inevitably go back to those few weeks of our first term when both of us were students, and the stings of pain I would experience when I used to see Harriet surrounded by admirers. I remembered once again thinking that she seemed to have few if any female friends, and that she was just one of those women who enjoyed the company of men so much more. No sooner would such thoughts come into my mind
than I had to shoo them out, for fear that they would sting me all over again, and I knew myself well enough to know that that way lay madness.