The Laments (15 page)

Howard looked for a taxicab while the family sat on a chaotic heap of suitcases.

“You’ll love England,” said Julia to Will, as if sensing his regret, or, perhaps, her own.

As the last passengers came down the gangplank, Will yearned for time to halt, for the travelers to reverse their steps, shed their overcoats, put on their swimsuits, jump back into their deck chairs, back to the bridge tables, back to the quoits and the volleyball courts, and back to the middles of their mystery novels.

“Can we go back?” asked Marcus, echoing Will’s sentiment.

“You’ll love England,” Julia repeated as she urged them toward a waiting taxi. Will noticed that her nose had taken on a shiny redness in the damp cold.

“No, I won’t,” snapped Julius.

“I won’t, either,” added Marcus.

Howard slammed the taxi door shut. Will peered through the foggy glass and spotted Mr. Perkins standing on tiptoes to plant a kiss on Mrs. Perkins as a fresh downpour swept over the windshield. And the Laments went forward.

You’ll Love England

“Oy, mate!” screamed the ruffian in the playground on Will’s first day at Avon Heath School. Will had never been called a mate before, so he said nothing. Undeterred, the boy stalked up to Will’s ear and shouted the greeting again with a fiercely hot and foul breath.

“Oy, mate, where’d you come from, then?”

“Africa.”

When the boy heard this, his feral features dropped with surprise, and a singular paradox struck him.

“Africa? Why aren’t you black?”

“Because I’m not,” Will replied.

The ruffian switched to a freckled squint. He looked Will over, down to his shins, as if a few inches of black skin between his knees and ankles would explain the contradiction. Ian Rillcock was the same height as Will, wearing the same school uniform—gray shorts, white shirt, blue-and-gold tie. A runny egg stain on the blazer almost concealed the school emblem.

The ruffian’s black shoes were worn into holes at the toes; his knees were scabbed. His teeth were small, yellow, and as pointed as matchsticks.

“I can beatchu up, y’know!” the boy snarled, raising one scabby fist with black fingernails.

“Why?”

“Watcha mean, why? Gimme any lip’n I’ll beatchu up!”

They were interrupted by the Bell Boy, an older classman who sprinted across the schoolyard ringing a hand bell to mark the beginning of class. The ruffian forgot Will and joined the small mob pursuing the Bell Boy. Will watched the older classman lead his assailants directly into the path of an elderly teacher. With a chorus of apologies, the mob did an about-face and tore into the building.

“You’d better introduce yourself,” said his teacher, Mr. Brogh, a mountain of a man with an alarmingly small head, gray-framed glasses, and a wattle neck that would have made a pelican envious.

“I’m Will Lament.”

“And I can beatchu up!” shouted a voice from the back of the room.

“Who said that?” barked Mr. Brogh. When no one owned up, the class was given lines:
I will not speak out of turn.
“Written one hundred times,” murmured Mr. Brogh in a malevolent singsong.

Will raised his hand.

“Yes, Lament?”

“Do
I
have to write lines, sir?”

“No exceptions, Mr. Lament,” sang Mr. Brogh. “No exceptions.”

“But I didn’t—”

“Until someone owns up,
everybody
writes lines, Mr. Lament. Is that understood?”

Justice in Mr. Brogh’s classroom was severe. As Will discovered a week later in history, it was also arbitrary.

“The best way to remember Henry VIII’s wives,” said Mr. Brogh, “is by reciting the following: ‘Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived’!”

A nervous titter came from Raymond Tugwood, in the front row. Then a blackboard eraser came flying from the back. It missed Will by an inch and smacked Tugwood, leaving a white smudge on the back of his head that remained for the rest of the day. Will glanced back, and noted Rillcock’s gloating squint.

“Who spoke? And who threw that?” demanded Mr. Brogh.

“I spoke, sir,” said Tugwood, giggling. Now Mr. Brogh narrowed his eyes at the back row, but Rillcock’s head was nowhere to be seen.

“So
Mr. Nobody
threw it, eh?” Mr. Brogh said. “I’ll have no speaking out of turn in my class.” He looked at Tugwood. “You think beheading is funny?”

“No, sir.” Tugwood nervously twirled a lock of hair at his temple.

“Perhaps you’d like a demonstration.”

Raymond Tugwood glanced at the yardstick in Mr. Brogh’s hand and uttered another nervous giggle.

“Who wants to behead young Mr. Tugwood?” barked Mr. Brogh. “How about Mr. Rillcock?”

“Wif pleasure, sir!”

“There’s a good lad,” Mr. Brogh sang, his massive wattle throbbing over his necktie.

Directed to stand, Tugwood began twirling his hair with feverish intensity.

“Step forward, Tugwood.”

Tugwood kneeled on the floor, poised over a makeshift chopping block fashioned from two volumes of the
Encyclopaedia Britannic
a
. The eager ruffian stepped forward and raised the yardstick over Tugwood’s neck. Mr. Brogh fastened a black scarf over Tugwood’s eyes.

“Traditionally, the victim’s eyes were covered,” murmured Mr. Brogh. “Ready, Rillcock?”

The rest of the class watched bleakly as Rillcock dug his matchstick teeth into his lower lip, delighted at the prospect of delivering further torment to Tugwood.

“When I say ‘three,’ Rillcock shall execute Tugwood in much the same way that Anne Boleyn was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1536. Understood?”

“Right, sir,” said the ruffian.

“One.”

Will noticed Raymond Tugwood’s finger twirling his shoelaces now, round and round. Though his eyes were concealed, the boy’s mouth hung open in dread, his fingers bone white at the nails.

“Two.”

Rillcock raised the yardstick a little higher, and Will was suddenly reminded of a ghost story Howard had told him, in which the victim was frightened to death by nothing more than a pinprick.

Tugwood’s pants turned dark in the crotch; a puddle widened around his knees.

“Three.”

But before Rillcock could bring the yardstick down, the teacher seized a third volume of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
from the bookshelf and swatted Rillcock on the side of the head with everything from Corpuscle to Dynasticism. The force of the volume sent Rillcock flying across the room.

“
That’s
what you get for throwing things and not owning up to it, Sonny Jim!”

A quivering heap on the floor, Rillcock let out a woeful sob and proceeded to vomit his breakfast in the corner—in Will’s fascinated estimation: boiled egg, bacon, toast, and a few peas and carrots.

The children stared like the audience of some grotesque circus in which two acts had simultaneously failed; their grim faces turned with disbelief from Rillcock’s vomitous breakfast in one corner of the room to the puddle of Tugwood’s piss in the other.

The next morning, Tugwood’s mother showed up in the playground. A wiry woman with a scarf tightly bound around her face, she clutched Raymond by the hand and shook her fist at the children, spit flying from a hole between her teeth.

“You leave my boy alone, you little buggers!” she cried in a thick brogue, while Raymond twirled his finger around the lock of hair at his temple.

Rillcock’s punishment seemed only to drive him into repetition. In the bog—the boys’ toilet—famous for its long trough painted with shiny black tar, he sang the same song over and over in the stall.

Oy c’n beatchu up, Oy can, Oy can!

Oy c’n beatchu up, Oy can!

Nevertheless, Rillcock had piqued Will’s curiosity about his own heritage. Will brought it up while touring the new supermarket on High Street with Julia.

“Mummy, why aren’t we black if we’re from Africa?”

This brought on a pained glance from his mother, who could see that his question was the mere tip of an iceberg.

“Well, darling, most people
originally
from Africa are black. But you, being descended from Irish who colonized Africa in the turn of the century, are a
white
African.”

“So I’m Irish?”

“Well, darling, you’re not
exactly
Irish. Our ancestors were known as
planters
—English who were
planted
in Northern Ireland in order to establish a British presence in the area. The Irish would most definitely consider us British.”

“Then I’m British!”

“Well, not exactly, darling, because that was a long, long time ago; the British would consider you a colonial.”

“A colonial?”

“Yes, somebody from one of the colonies.”

“Then what
am
I, Mummy?”

“Well, you’re from Southern Rhodesia.”

“So that’s what I am.”

“And what am
I,
Mum?” asked Marcus.

“You’re a bugger,” said Julius, who had heard Mrs. Tugwood’s diatribe in the playground.

“That’s enough, Julius!” snapped his mother.

At that moment, Will happened to spot a familiar face in the frozen-food section: the ruffian, poised like a cat, teeth together, hair on edge.

“Oy, mate! I can—” But the boy was interrupted by a fierce woman with a vast head of curlers whose thunderous voice made the fish sticks tremble on their shelves.

“Ian! So ’elp me I’ll belt you round the ear ’ole if you don’t catch up this minute!”

Chastened, the ruffian mimed the rest of his warning, and hurried after his mother, who was heaving cases of baked beans into her shopping cart.

“Friend of yours, Will?” asked Julia.

“No. Enemy,” he replied.

“Didn’t he call you ‘mate’?”

Will sighed at the paradox. “‘Mate’ means friend
or
enemy here, Mum.”

Next afternoon Rillcock followed Will home, dancing behind him, fists boxing the air, but whenever Will whirled around, the ruffian leaped clear of him.

When Will turned in to his front garden, Rillcock stopped at the fence post, calling after him in triumph.

“Now I know where you
live,
mate! I’m gonna get all me friends, and—”

“And do
wha
t
?” cried Will with exasperation. “Throw up on me?”

“
YOU MAY HAVE TO FIGHT HIM
,” said Howard when the matter reached the dinner table. The twins had finished their food and were running around the table while Howard, Julia, and Will tried to talk. Eventually, Marcus tripped, Julius landing on top of him.

“I can’t believe we’re talking about English boys!” said Julia. “Who are these little savages?”

“Just boys,” explained Howard, watching Julius sink his teeth into Marcus’s calf. Marcus let out a scream.

“He won’t leave you alone until you fight him, Will,” said Howard.

“Fighting is no solution,” Julia snapped as she wrenched the twins apart and clamped her feet around Julius’s waist so that she could wash off Marcus’s bite wound.

“Look,” Howard said, “this boy obviously wants to establish a pecking order. If Will does nothing, this brat will torment him all year.”

“You mean I
have
to fight?” said Will.

“Yes, you do,” said Howard.

“No, you don’t!” countered Julia.

Howard blinked at Julia. “If he doesn’t, he could become a pariah, an outcast.”

“You’re behaving as though we’re still in Africa,” Julia said. “This isn’t some backward wilderness!”

“It has nothing to do with being
backward
,” replied Howard. “Boys are simply man in his most primitive stage: tribal, savage, and violent.”

“I should have had girls,” Julia said.

“I wish we’d never moved,” Will said.

“Cheer up,” Howard told his son. “All you have to do is bash this boy’s lights out.”

Convinced that Will needed to adapt, to toughen up, to be more English, Howard proposed boxing lessons in the backyard. With the twins cheering them on, Howard taught Will to feint, to guard his face, and to punch. Julia watched from a distance, arms folded and lips pursed, until her anger came to a boil.

“And what about the twins? Are
they
going to have to bash someone’s lights out, too?”

“The twins are different,” snapped Howard. “God help the little bugger who tries to bother
the
m
!”

At that moment, Will lowered his fists and his father clipped him, sending him flying backward against the door of the old coal shed.

“Gotta keep your guard up, Will! Up you get!” Though the boy staggered to his feet, he avoided his father’s glance and tore into the house. Julia heard footsteps, and the slam of Will’s door.

“See what I mean?” said Howard. “Soft.”

Julia looked up at Will’s window. “Howard, I don’t think he likes being told he’s different.”

“What do you mean?”

“He looks at himself in the mirror. Marcus’s hair is getting like mine. Julius has your face. I think Will feels like the odd man out.”

“Well, once he can fight, he’ll fit in just fine.”

Julia gave Howard a lingering glance. “And how are you fitting in, Howard?” she asked. “At work, I mean. You haven’t said a word about it.”

“Fine,” he replied. “Absolutely fine, darling.”

TWO MONTHS PREVIOUS
to their arrival in Southampton, Howard had flown to England in search of a job. Nigel Barr, the man who had recruited him, lacked the enthusiasm of Gordon Snifter or Seamus Thatcher. Mr. Barr didn’t travel; he merely sat in the headquarters of Pan-Europa and interviewed applicants every twenty minutes.

“
Another
South African,” he said with a yawn, punching a small brass-and-wood chess clock to begin the interview. “Lament, eh? I was in a college production of
The Laments of Father Jeremiah
. Ever heard of it?”

Howard shook his head—a critical mistake, because Mr. Barr insisted on relating the plot, as well as his brief dramatic career. “I was the youngest Captain Hook in history. When I was fifteen, my voice ripened into a baritone, you see, and that made me
indispensable
in pantomime!” Soon Mr. Barr’s baritone was interrupted by the ding of the chess clock, followed by a rap at the door from the next candidate. Howard made a desperate plea as Mr. Barr escorted him out.