The Laments (20 page)

Will was fascinated by the mosaic of a Roman nobleman seated on a marble dais, flanked by two hunting dogs. It reminded him of their old neighbor Buck Quinn.

The twins, however, were in revolt; Marcus felt like a freak with his singed eyebrows, and brooded in the car until Julius enticed him to join him on the floor of the museum, where they stamped their heels, shaking the jewelry cabinets, until Howard threatened them with a meal of soap flakes.

“Will!” barked Howard. “Will you
please
take your brothers outside?”

Grudgingly, Will left the mosaic and led his brothers into the sunshine. On the hillock, the twins escaped from his grip and tore off, leaving sleek wet trails through the wild barley. Since they could come to no harm here, Will found a patch of wall to sit on, and rested his arms on his knees.

“Do you know where you’re sitting?” said a man’s voice.

Will noticed only the tweed jacket and leather elbow patches of his visitor.

“No, sir,” he replied.

“That was the bedroom of a Roman governor. I was plowing this field, precisely where you are, with nothing but barley in every direction . . .”

He waved at the stalks standing still like golden ranks of soldiers in the faint morning mist as the twins returned, whining like dive-bombers through the barley.

“. . . when I hit something hard. Thought it was a rock, but when I got off the tractor and checked the blades, I found a sword and a small golden ring.”

He held up his hand to display a ring with a stone etched with a small male figure wielding a sword.

“Mars, the god of war,” said Will.

The farmer gave a delighted nod. “Well done, boy.” He took Will a few paces farther. “Where you’re standing now is where the owner of this house, fifteen hundred years ago, would receive visitors. He owned all the land he could see from this spot in all directions.”

“He took all this land from the English?” asked Will.

The farmer laughed. “
Englis
h
?
There were no
English,
just a group of savage tribes, each more bloodthirsty than the last. The Romans brought them a system of roads, plumbing, a system of government, a code of law. Without the Romans, we’d all still be running about with spears and painted faces.

“Here—try it on,” said the farmer, offering the ring. The stone was a deep pink with a heavy gold girdle around it. “Remember this”—the farmer winked—“you’ve worn something priceless on your finger!” The farmer slipped the ring back on and walked away to greet another group of sightseers.

On the trip home, Will considered priceless things. He remembered the bayonet hole in Digley’s father’s uniform, and Sally’s smile in the air-raid shelter.

His parents were talking in the front seat—awed remarks about the treasures on display.

“Why do you
like
the Romans?” asked Will.

“They were a great civilization,” said Julia.

“Are
we
a great civilization?”

“That’ll be for somebody else to decide,” said Howard.

His parents started talking about other things, and Will stared out the window. He thought of the Roman nobleman in the mosaic who resembled Buck Quinn, and the ring with the tiny figure of Mars, and his mother telling him to remember Churchill’s funeral. The England his parents had so much affection for was clearly not the one they lived in but a world hinted at through artifacts. For the first time, he wondered whether his parents were pursuing something imaginary in their travels.

Farewell Again

“Lament? Y’know what my favorite record is?”

Sally Byrd whispered this question during geometry class.

“What?” said Will.

“‘Bits and Pieces,’” whispered Sally.

“What?” said Will again.

“‘Bits and Pieces,’ by the Dave Clark Five. You could come over to my house and hear it,” said Sally.

There was a now-or-never mood in class these days. The year was coming to an end; primary school would soon be over. They’d all taken the eleven-plus exam, which demarcated everybody’s future pretty clearly: the ones who passed would go to a college preparatory school; the others would go to trade school.

“Where the ditchdiggers and plumbers go,” Howard joked. “Don’t worry, Will. You’ll pass.”

The letter from the examiners was addressed to Julia, who glanced at the first line and gave him a tight smile.

“Sorry, darling, you didn’t make it.”

At dinner, Howard appeared stunned. He read the letter several times, then pronounced it irrelevant.

“But I don’t want to dig ditches for a living,” complained Will.

“You’ll never dig ditches,” said Howard. “You’re smarter than any of them.”

“Why didn’t I pass, then?”

“Probably because you’re a foreigner. This exam’s for English children, and you didn’t have the background. Don’t worry, you can take the exam again. They let you keep taking it until you pass.”

Will looked around the classroom the next morning with a newfound sense of estrangement. He wasn’t the only one: Digley had passed the test, but Ayers hadn’t; Raymond Tugwood had passed, but Sally Byrd hadn’t; and Rillcock had passed, to everyone’s amazement. The little heathen danced past their desks, pausing to gloat over Will.

“Don’t worry, you can fix my washing machine in a few years, eh, Lament?”

“Has your family ever
used
a washing machine?” snapped Will.

In those last few weeks of school, mates were split apart, futures hurled in opposite directions. And, of course, those destined for the same lot made alliances.

Will and Sally drew close again. He was invited to her house one afternoon; they passed from Dr. Byrd’s modern dental office, with its chrome chairs and fittings, to the Byrds’ cozy living room, the walls papered with blue lilies and hung with an assortment of decorative plates marking the queen’s coronation, her marriage, and the births of the royal offspring. They ate buttered toast smeared with Marmite in the kitchen, and proceeded upstairs to Sally’s bedroom.

“I share it with my sister,” she explained.

Sally and her sister were collectors, too; the beds had frilly lace covers with piles of stuffed animals. Glossy photos and pictures clipped from magazines were taped to the wallpaper like a pop mosaic: the Beatles, Elvis, Lulu, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Cilla Black, Engelbert Humperdinck, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and the Rolling Stones. Iridescent black 45s, foot-high stacks of them, were on the floor, with others spilled across the bed. Pasted to the door were newspaper pictures of TV variety-show hosts like Val Doonican and Rolf Harris, movie stars like Anita Ekberg and Brigitte Bardot, and comedy teams like the
Carry On
casts and the Goons.

The record player was white and plastic, with a red arm. It wasn’t anything like the sober gray box at home, which Howard declared could play only Beethoven, Haydn, and the odd Gregorian chant. Sally’s record player was an instrument of fun and wickedness. It played Peter Sellers doing Twit Conway and Flanders & Swann singing a love song between hippos. It played “Puppet on a String,” “Those Were the Days,” “Telstar,” and “The Green, Green Grass of Home.” And, most important to Sally, it played “Bits and Pieces.”

The sound was scratchy but loud.

“Do you like it?” asked Sally.

Will’s mouth hung open as he stared at the line of lipsticks on the dresser, the stockings hanging over the chair, the rows of heels below the bed, and the purple boa draped over her headboard.

“Oh, yes,” he said.

This room was another country, a shrine to teenage girlhood, and he was on his knees.

“Where’s your sister?”

“God knows,” said Sally. She started nodding her head to the music, her Beatle hair shaking in all directions just the way theirs did on TV. The music ended, and Sally stacked a few more 45s on the turntable.

“My sister
loves
‘Bits and Pieces.’ Don’t you think it’s groovy?”

“Groovy. Oh, yes,” said Will. “What else does your sister like?”

“She likes the wet look,” said Sally, pointing to a fire-engine-red PVC skirt draped on a chair. It was a shiny piece of nothing. Will wondered if one could fall in love with somebody’s sister without ever seeing her.

“Where is your sister?”

“She’s never home,” explained Sally. “Boys, y’know.”

A deep voice seemed to speak from the carpet.

“Sally?”

“Yeah, Dad?” cried Sally, looking at the red shag rug.

“Can’t hear meself work, Sally!” said the deep voice. “Turn it down, love.”

Sally lowered the volume; they lay on the floor with their heads together, near the record-player speaker. Her hair smelled of coconut shampoo. They listened to “Bits and Pieces” half a dozen times, then to Cliff Richard, Lulu, Dusty, and “Bits and Pieces” six times again for good measure.

When it got dark, Will explained that he had to go. Sally walked him downstairs. At the door she held on to his sleeve and glanced back to make sure they were unseen.

“Bye,” said Will.

“Hold on,” she said, and gave him a moist kiss on the lips. Will looked shaken.

“It’s all right, Lament,” Sally said. “My sister kisses
all
the boys good-bye.”

Will changed his mind. It was Sally he was in love with. Her lips tasted like coconut, too.

NOBODY SEEMED PERTURBED
by his late arrival. His parents were in the kitchen, talking in a low murmur. The twins were out near the garage. Julius was attaching a Ping-Pong ball to the tail of the neighbor’s cat.

“What did I miss?” Will asked.

“Nuffink,” said Marcus.

Julius released the unhappy creature, which tore off into the darkness with the ball clicking and clacking all over the street.

“That’s cruel,” said Will.

“I
told
you it was cruel,” complained Marcus to Julius.

“We’re moving to America,” Julius said.

“What?” said Will.

“Dad’s got a job there.”

“And Mummy’s got a job, too,” Marcus said, “but it’s here.” He paused. “They’re fighting.”

Mr. Henley, apparently inspired by Julia’s attempt to augment the household income, hired his
own
wife for the art teacher’s position. Two months later, he urged her to withdraw from the job—Mrs. Henley was a good art teacher, but she hadn’t been keeping up with the housework and the ironing, and Mr. Henley abhorred an unpressed shirt. Julia was offered the position. Meanwhile, Howard’s American company had made him an offer.

“I don’t want to go to America!” Will declared.

“You see,” said Julia to Howard. “It’s not just me.”

“Surely you don’t want to go to ditchdigging school, Will,” Howard joked.

“You said I could take the test again!” Will replied.

“Will,” said Howard, “
everybody
wants to go to America!”

But Will was already up the stairs, his door slammed shut.

“Have they got lots of cats in America?” asked Julius.

“Of course they’ve got cats!” Howard said.

“I’ll go where Julius goes,” said Marcus.

Julia sat back, her arms folded, her mouth firmly set.

“You’ll love America, darling,” Howard insisted. “It’s the most progressive society around. And the taxes are lower.”

“We’d be starting all over,” Julia replied.
“Again.”

“I’ll make
twice
what I make here!”

“What about school for Will? And what about my job offer?”

“Darling, every American child can go to college. It’s a matter of money, not aptitude. And I’ll be paid a fortune, which is why
you’ll
never need to work in America!” This was clearly the wrong thing to say. Another door slammed, and Howard found himself alone with the twins.

IT TOOK ROSE’S LETTER
to unite the family:

America? What a crass and vulgar place. What have the Americans given the world? Soft drinks and Doris Day! Isn’t it bad enough that we have to hear them mangle the English language in their films? Must you submit your children to such a fate? They’ll be outcasts, reviled by their kin, and they’ll have those awful
accents.
Americans are as crass as Russians, almost as crude as Italians, and as snobbish as the French. For the sake of the children, don’t do it!

Julia told Howard that she would go to America, but with conditions.

“First: I might well take a job, whether we need the income or not,” she said.

“But you won’t . . .” began Howard.

“Not just to make money, Howard, but for my own sense of worth.”

“Well, of course, darling,” replied Howard.

“And
my
pride should be as important to
you
as yours is to me, don’t you agree?”

“Absolutely.”

“Second: I won’t be led around the country. I’m getting older, Howard. I want to settle down; so do the boys.”

Howard eagerly accepted Julia’s conditions; there was no doubt in his mind that the next place would be the final stop. America would supply everything that England lacked. In America, people became millionaires because of their inventiveness. Assuredly, Howard would find his destiny there.

UNLIKE THE TWINS
, Will had strong misgivings about leaving. He knew that all his routines would change, and the faces of his friends and neighbors would never be seen again. This time he wanted to savor his farewells. Sally was out sick on his last day of school, so he visited her house to say good-bye.

A tall girl with Sally’s eyes but with a more petulant mouth answered the door. Will tried to imagine this girl in a wet-look skirt, but the sneer on her face stifled his imagination. He asked for Sally.

“Sally? She’s out.” The girl gave him a rude glance just like her sister. “What d’you want, then?”

“To say good-bye.”

“Come back later,” she replied.

“I can’t. I’m leaving for America,” he said.

“America?” She cocked her head in interest.

Will noted that Fiona Byrd had a good four inches on Sally, and she wore peach lipstick and her fuzzy peach sweater displayed small, pointed breasts.

“You’re that Lament boy, aren’t you?” she said, and swept her hair over her shoulder as though his destination warranted some adjustment in her appearance.