The Laments (19 page)

Will looked at the beckoning sea, still strangely unreachable, and noted the absence of swarthy men, sand, and smiling children; there was only a bearded man in striped pajamas, who was shouting at the seagulls and waving a full roll of what appeared to be toilet paper in his left hand.

“How can we play ’ere?” screamed Marcus.

“You mean ‘here,’” Julia said.

“’Ow can we play with no sand, Mummy?” moaned Julius.

Julia looked to Howard, her eyes like cold steel.

“Couldn’t you find us a sandy beach?”

“Bloody hell,” exclaimed Howard. “A beach is a beach!”

“Picking up language from the
children,
are we?” whispered Julia. “Look, it’s hardly a beach if they can’t walk on it, and this is hardly a meal if it tastes like the floor of the car.”

Howard turned to the flinty shore. The man in his pajamas had stepped up to a prominent rock, and now stretched out his arms in a blissful embrace of the view.

“Look how content that man is!” Howard protested.

“The hell with that man—this is not what we promised. Howard, you must find us a
sandy
beach.”

“So that the children will have sand in their food, too? Is
that
what you want, darling? If that’s what you want, I’m happy to oblige. I just think we could be quite happy here. What do you think, lads?”

The twins’ complaints faded abruptly. “Hey, Mum!” said Julius. “That geezer’s
pooping
in the sea!”

All eyes turned to the man on the rock. The bottom half of his striped pajamas had fallen to his ankles; he dropped to a squat in silhouette, and appeared to be shitting into the surf, wiping his ass with toilet paper from the roll under his arm.

Will saw the chasm between his parents instantaneously vanish. All it took was a lunatic with his pants off.

“Right,” declared Howard. “I’ll find another beach.”

A cold breeze picked up, and Julia tied back her hair under a scarf and began rubbing lotion into Marcus’s shoulders.

“But there’s no sun,” protested Marcus, gazing up at the grim clouds while his skin turned to gooseflesh.

“Not a word,” Julia warned, replacing Marcus with Julius. Thunder cracked overhead.

Smeared with suntan lotion they didn’t need, the twins tore across the rocks. But the lunar landscape had them hopping in pain within a few yards of the water.

Howard ambled back from the car, folding his map with a satisfied snap. “Good news—I’ve found a sandy beach.”

“How far?” asked Julia, detecting some fracture in his confident smile.

“Only sixty miles, darling.”

PASSING MOTORISTS WOULD HAVE ADMIRED
the rugged family determinedly eating its lunch on the inhospitable shoreline of Sodham as rain pattered down in an overture for the black storm approaching from the west. Only on closer inspection would anyone have noticed that the two adults faced in opposite directions.

Out of the Rut

Julia had started painting in the evenings. The living-room walls were adorned with her efforts. There was an impressionistic landscape of Maiden Castle, with the grassy furrows crosshatched in windy currents, and a view of their semidetached house in Avon Heath, the battered Morris parked in front of the garage. She was at work on a coffeehouse scene. The details were Arabian: ornate plasterwork on the walls, geometric tile on the floor, a featureless man in a white suit at a table, nursing a glass of mint tea.

This was no idle pastime. Julia was driven by a sense of purpose. The holiday in Sodham had left her feeling ashamed of her own passivity. Poor Howard, she had thought. If he couldn’t get out of his rut, it was up to her to make a contribution. He was absolutely right—she needed a job. Now that all three boys were in school, there was no justification for all the spare time she had.

Howard sat in his armchair reading a biography of the American inventor Charles Goodyear. He was at the exciting part, when Goodyear vulcanizes rubber, but he put the book down because he had something important to say.

“Look here, Julia. You know, after that awful holiday, I started thinking.”

Julia looked at him, relief on her face.

“So have I, darling.”

“I had no right to say what I said.”

“Neither did I, Howard. I feel very ashamed—”

“No, darling,” interrupted her husband, “you shouldn’t. In fact, as luck would have it, I might actually have a new job soon. I’ve been talking to somebody.”

“Somebody?”

“Yes. Somebody I met. An American businessman.”

Julia lowered her brush, rattling it in a jar of turpentine while surprise played on her face.

“An American? When were you going to tell me?”

“I
am
telling you . . . Well, I wouldn’t have told you until it was pretty definite,” Howard explained.

“Honestly, Howard,” said Julia, “getting information from you is like pulling nails out of a bull’s bum!”

Howard averted his eyes. Julia had given up trying to improve her children’s language and had started adopting it.

“Well, it’s an American company. And these Americans seem interested in taking me on as a design engineer. Americans are like that,” he added. “They like innovation, while the English . . . half their plumbing is left over from the Romans!”

“Well, Howard,” Julia replied, “it happens that I’ve applied for a job, too.”

THERE WAS A POSITION AVAILABLE
at the boys’ school for an art teacher. Julia had prepared her résumé and culled some of her newest paintings, and that very morning had attended a meeting with the headmaster, Mr. Henley. A tactless man, Henley judged her paintings as if he were in a holiday gift shop.

“I like this one, don’t like that.
That’s
not bad.”

Finally he looked up at her and knitted his brows. “I see no recent employment, Mrs. Lament.”

“I’ve been raising children,” Julia replied. “Three boys. They’re all your students, as a matter of fact.”

Mr. Henley offered a paternal smile. “So why the sudden urge to work, Mrs. Lament?”

Julia felt her anger appear as a blush. “Well,” she stammered, “to take the burden off my husband a bit, and to keep occupied.”

Mr. Henley smiled thinly. “I merely meant, Mrs. Lament, that you have three children to raise. I would think that your hands are
full
.”

The headmaster promised to be in touch.

A WEEK LATER
, Howard waited for the children to be tucked in before expressing his concerns to Julia.

“Darling, I’ve been thinking about this job idea of yours, and you know I support you wholeheartedly . . .”

“Of course I know that, Howard.”

“But what if one of the children falls sick? What about the housework? And supposing we have to move? What then, what about our mobility?”

“Darling, I would never want to hinder our mobility,” she began. “But surely if I was making a contribution to our livelihood you would take that into account before suggesting we pick up and leave.”

There was a pause before Howard nodded. Julia sensed that he hadn’t considered this possibility before. Nevertheless, she believed, and hoped, that he would be reasonable about it.

“Of course, Julia,” he said finally. “We make these decisions together.”

“Oh, darling, I’m so glad you said that,” cried Julia, and they embraced. She had feared that Howard was so comfortable with leading the family from country to country that her opinion had become superfluous. Now she was reminded of his decency, and the strength of their marriage. Trixie and Chip could never have come to such an understanding.

“Howard,” she said, “the truth is that I didn’t get the job.”

Howard shrugged, with a relieved smile. “Well, that’s all right,” he confessed. “Nothing’s definite about the American job, either.”

Bonfire

When the leaves fell down in Avon Heath, it was common practice to dispose of them with a bonfire. Howard zestfully explained to his sons that “bonfire” was a contraction of “bone fire,” meaning a cleansing rite of burning bodies during the plagues. The twins were both very impressed with this fact. Julius made an effigy to burn in the fire, a stuffed figure sewn together from his outgrown clothes that he named Mr. Henley; this in retribution for the six hard raps on the knuckles delivered by the headmaster when Julius threw blancmange across the school canteen.

Marcus, on the other hand, was fascinated by the embers in the center of the fire—those glowing chunks of wood, blackened on the outside, golden red within. He pictured a miniature world of citizens who went about their lives in this wondrous furnace. Fire was beautiful to Marcus, and he drew himself so close to the embers that Howard had to caution him repeatedly to watch out lest he burn his Wellingtons. Will felt a consequent pang of anxiety when Howard left him in charge. By now, the flames leaped over the twins’ heads. Julius found a long stick to prod the headmaster with, and added a few incantations in Pig Latin to speed the flames. When he lunged at the figure with his spear, he sent a cascade of sparks into the twilight. Will paused to marvel at the glittering updraft until he noticed a second fire a few feet away.

“Marcus?” Will cried out. Marcus was nowhere to be seen. Will advanced cautiously toward the small fire and his stomach did a slow turn.

The fire had arms and legs. Its hands were beating at the flames.

Will grabbed an arm and dragged his brother across the ground, rolling him over and over, until the flames were smothered. Marcus’s jackets and pants were badly burned, and his face stank of burning hair, but aside from the patches where his eyebrows used to be, and a few singed spots on his scalp, he seemed all right.

“Why didn’t you shout!” cried Will, panting, as he hoisted his brother up.

Marcus had a dazed stare. He smiled, looking back at the big bonfire.

“If you can live in a fire, it means you are immortal.”

“Well, you’re
not
,
” said Will. “You’d be a cooked sausage! God, you smell awful!”

Will led his brothers home, brushing the cinders from their clothing and hair in fearful anticipation of his mother’s reaction.

But Julia directed her fury at the victim.

“Oh, Marcus,” she cried, “have you no sense at all?” She proceeded to give the boy a vigorous scrubbing, which seemed, to Will, a vain attempt at washing the stupidity out of his brother.

Will was surprised to see Julius appear at his door just after bedtime, his long face streaked with tears.

“What’s wrong?”

“Marcus almost died,” murmured his brother. “I was so busy with Mr. Henley that I didn’t see him set on fire.”

“He’s all right,” Will said.

“I know,” sobbed Julius. “But who would I play with if he was gone?”

Will walked Julius back to the twins’ bedroom. Marcus was already asleep, snoring with his mouth open. Julius was still sobbing as Will tucked him into bed, and fell quiet only after Will found him a miniature King Kong figure to clutch in one hand. Will kneeled by his brother’s bed until the boy’s eyes closed.

But a hollow ache throbbed in Will’s chest as he considered Julius’s question—
Who would I play with if he was gone
?
—for clearly his presence was of no consolation to Julius; and this reminded him of his position in the family, the solitary son between two couples.

MARCUS’S RESCUE PROMPTED WILL
to volunteer as Bell Boy for the month of January. It was a task for the courageous—running around the school’s perimeter jingling a bell to mark the change of class, tagged by a mob of boys who apparently believed that if there were no bell, school would consist of six hours in the playground. So pursued, Will employed speed, agility, and, when all else failed, the bell itself, wielded as a blunt instrument, to make his rounds. On the third day he evaded the mob by taking a detour through the air-raid shelter.

That was where he found Sally, huddled in the shadows, nursing the butt of a cigarette. Her smile was wary.

“Hello, Lament,” she said.

He watched the mob scream past and disappear around a corner.

“Are we still enemies, then?” she continued. “You’ve been looking
through
me for almost a year.”

“Well,” Will replied, “Digley asked you to be his girlfriend and you said yes.”

“He said you didn’t fancy me anymore,” said Sally.

Will denied this. “I came back from being sick and you were holding hands.”

“I tried to talk to you at the gate every day, but you walked past me.” Sally took a last miserable draw from her cigarette.

Will raised his bell. “I’d better finish.”

Sally gave him an urgent glance. “Anyway, Digley’s not my boyfriend anymore.”

“Really?” he replied.

She nodded.

They walked back to the classroom together. The mob dropped back when it saw the Bell Boy escorted by a girl.

England Isn’t What It Used to Be

Will wrote to his grandmother. All he meant to describe was his rescue of Marcus and the family’s relief. It was a letter that sent tremors across the globe.

Dear Granny,

Marcus almost burned to a crisp when he caught fire. I rescued him and Mummy told him that she’d kill him if he ever went near flames again. Julius stabbed and burned his headmaster to death, but it was a dummy. Daddy hates his job and thinks England isn’t what it used to be.

Weeks later, Julia received a reply:

Dear me, what has become of England? Judging from the violent and self-destructive tendencies of the twins, I advise you to send them to an institution capable of dealing with such juvenile issues. As for Howard’s unhappiness, Julia, I urge you to remember your wedding vows. I would also suggest that you bring the children back to Africa, where they can enjoy a
normal
childhood!

Howard insisted on taking the family on yet another motoring trip to see exactly what England
used to be
. They drove about thirty-five miles down the old Roman road that lay between London and Chichester to the South Downs. A wooden barn housed several preserved mosaic floors and some gold and pottery.