The Pink House at Appleton (16 page)

Dennis drove up in a battered Land Rover exactly at ten o'clock. He swung out of the vehicle and pointed to his new Timex watch with the brown leather strap and the perfect stitching. It was the same watch Barrington dreamed of owning. He had completed the coupon at the back of the Gene Autrey comic and had been saving his pocket money, but his wrist was still bare.

‘On the dot,' Dennis bawled. He was wearing his school khakis, a polo shirt, brown loafers and had that lanky look of boys between youth and adulthood. He wore his hair in a Tony C. This hairstyle, popular with boys his age, had been adopted from the film star Tony Curtis, whose hair jutted out in a coiffured quiff at the front. Dennis could often be seen using his slim plastic comb to maintain this quiff. He, and boys like him, called the hairstyle a TC. Barrington himself was secretly cultivating one for when he went to big school.

Mama took a worried look at the old vehicle parked in the yard and smiled graciously at Dennis. After all, he had volunteered to tutor the boys, although only after substantial kindnesses from Miss Hutchinson.

‘It may be old but it's reliable,' Dennis assured Mama. ‘It will take us there and back. And it can't turn over. It will stick to the road like a bulldozer. Mrs Brookes, you know you can trust me with the boys.' Dennis beamed, seeing the effect on Mama. The mothers on the estate approved of him.

There was no time to waste. The open road was waiting, the sky clear, the hot boiling sugar smell everywhere, wild flowers bright in the rolling fields, and the tennis courts lay in green shade, empty. But in the mounting excitement, Boyd saw beneath Mama's smile, saw the anxiety, saw that other face that would appear once they had gone. He was torn.

‘I'll teach you to be Pancho Gonzales,' he heard Dennis say.

Dennis got in and slammed the door. They waved to Mama and to Yvonne, who was now racked with self-induced sobs. Mavis, standing behind Mama, poked her tongue out at Boyd. Her tongue appeared bright pink in the shade. Boyd, thinking strawberry ice cream, turned quickly away only to lock eyes upon a solitary Vincent leaning against the side of the garage with an air of total abandonment. Poppy followed them as far as the gate. It was a new experience driving in an open-top Land Rover, white dust billowing behind, Dennis's excited voice chattering as his sweating hand mangled the gears
. It could
not be stopped now
.
They would be alone in the shade behind the club and he would do it there.

‘You don't have rackets?' Dennis said, surprised. ‘Don't worry, we'll use the ones at the club. Remember, all the best players have their own rackets. When you're older and come up to Munro, you'll see how we play tennis. You'll see the way we play the other houses. Beat the daylights out of them all the time. When you walk out on the court wearing your Lacoste shirt with the little green crocodile – not every Tom, Dick or Harry will have those you know – dressed in all your whites and the girls from Hampton are cheering from the stands, oh man! You boys will find out one day. You have girlfriends? No, you're too young for girls. When I was your age – well, your age, Barrington – I used to fool around with Pamela Carby. Her old man didn't know a thing. The maid found out, though, but kept her trap shut after I gave her a look. I used to feel up her breasts – Pamela, not the maid – at the back of the house. Girls love that. You wouldn't know what it's like to feel up a girl's breasts. Jeez. Your time will come. Maybe today, eh, Barrington?' Dennis laughed his braying laugh, head thrown back, and narrowly missed a mongoose rushing across the road for the safety of the cane-piece.

‘I sent a note to Geraldine Pinnock,' Barrington said, so brazenly that Boyd was embarrassed for him. Barrington just wanted to be like the big boys who had no restraint.

‘A note!' Dennis hollered. ‘What did you do that for? You need to go to her house when her old man's not there. Mrs Pinnock's nice, just like Mrs Wilson in
Dennis the Menace
. She'll give you cornmeal muffins and let you sit on the verandah with Geraldine. While Geraldine plays the piano, put your hand up her dress. See? Learn from the master. Go to her house, man.'

Boyd and Barrington exchanged shocked looks. They knew such an act was impossible. If Papa ever heard about it, he would kill Barrington for certain, who would deserve to be killed, doing something like that. A note was safe.

‘She knows about football,' Barrington said. ‘I swapped her my football cards at the club.'

‘Football cards? You goofed, man, you goofed.' Dennis laughed so raucously that both boys joined him, helplessly, laughing in the sun and the wind and the open air in the rickety Land Rover, laughing so hard they cried.

‘Do you play football?' Barrington asked, when the laughing was over, thinking to get one up on Dennis, even though he wouldn't have minded carrying on with the conversation and learn from Dennis how to feel up Geraldine Pinnock. He wished that Boyd wasn't present. Boyd didn't know anything about girls. He only knew to gaze up into the sky and fall into the grass like a mad person.

‘Do I play football? Ha, ha, ha. Do I play football. Barrington, Barrington, you are joking with me, man. You are talking to the king of football. I'm on the school team. Outside right, that's my position. I score from twenty, thirty yards all the time, ask anybody. They fear me at Munro. I have what they call
ball sense
. If you don't have that, you'll never be a footballer. One of these days we'll have a Boys versus Men's match. Mr Moodie is good. Lived in England in a place called Sheffield where silver cutlery comes from. They have professional football clubs up there. They
pay
you to play football. Can you believe a thing like that?'

Barrington warmed to Dennis and spoke rapidly about the football pictures he had collected, about Wembley stadium and Pele.

‘Who?' Dennis said.

‘Pele, Pele.'

‘Pele what?'

‘That's his name,' Barrington cried triumphantly. ‘They say he's the youngest Brazilian footballer. The youngest! He plays for Santos. I have a picture of him in my scrapbook, and Denis Law too. He plays for Huddersfield Town. They say he's a wonder-boy. I saw it in the
Daily Express
at the club.'

‘A wonder-boy.' Dennis glanced at Barrington, nodding his appreciation. ‘You are a football brain,' he said, appraising Barrington, who took on a look of very great importance, deliberately not looking at Boyd, whose eyes, he knew, were on him. ‘What does Boyd play?'

‘He doesn't play,' Barrington said quickly, with a “didn't you know?” look. ‘He only reads books.'

‘Reads books?' Dennis looked with interest at Boyd, sitting between Barrington and the gear-shift and holding on tight as the Land Rover bounced and swayed. ‘What kind of books?'

‘Every kind,' Boyd answered.

‘Such as?' Dennis persisted.

Boyd knew that Dennis, although a senior boy at Munro with moustache hair already darkening his upper lip, wouldn't understand. Dennis was only interested in his Ivy League trousers, brown loafers and Vitalis for his hair. Boyd knew that he couldn't talk about
Great Expectations
to Barrington and Dennis. They would probably laugh at him. If only he could talk about the moment he met Estella at Miss Havisham's house, that quiet house with its weather-beaten gate and unkempt garden. How could Dennis and Barrington understand that he was Pip, or that he could easily be Pip, because all Pip's feelings, his anxiety, his vulnerability were his, Boyd's?
You may kiss me, Estella had said
. To hear such a girl say such a thing was utterly unimaginable. Yet it happened. He had been there, in the depths of that garden, in that house, facing Estella, completely overwhelmed by her.
In the same way in which Susan now overwhelmed him.
How could they understand, caring only for football and feeling up girls, about the big feelings that
Great Expectations
produced in him? He thought it best to remain silent.

‘I bet you only read comics,' Dennis jeered.

‘He reads lots of comics,' Barrington informed Dennis. ‘
Hopalong Cassidy, Kid Colt Outlaw, Superman, Heckle and Jeckle, and Johnnie Mack Brown
. And he likes to smell them.' Barrington laughed, seeing Boyd cringe. ‘It's true.'

‘Smell them? What for?' Dennis asked. ‘I knew you were a comic reader. You can read my
Tarzan, Archie
and
Rex Allen
comics. You can smell them too. Ha, ha. I have a room full of them, maybe two hundred.'

It hurt Boyd that they didn't appreciate the scent of the comic pages, those lovely bright red splashes, the truest blues and yellows, the scorching blaze of a six-gun, the smell of America and of adventure. How could anyone not be intrigued by what lay among the pages?

‘I'm going to read
Tropic of Cancer
,' he forced himself to say, not wanting Dennis to think he was just a comic reader. But the moment he said the words, he regretted it because he didn't want to be considered a show-off.

‘Say what?' The Land Rover swerved, registering the impact of Dennis's surprise. ‘What do you know about
Tropic of Cancer
?
It's a bad book.'

‘No, it's not,' Boyd said, feeling Barrington's weighty stare. ‘It's about life.' He experienced that confidence, superiority too, of believing he knew what they didn't know. But he felt outnumbered.

Dennis laughed horribly. ‘About life? Where have you heard all this stuff? It's about sex, sex! I shouldn't be telling you this. I promised Mrs Brookes to look after you boys. But it's strictly for adults, that book. It's banned. You're not supposed to read it. It's the baddest book around. When I say bad, I mean bad.'

‘Miss Hutchinson's going to lend it to me,' Boyd said defensively, aware of Barrington's eyes upon him with that adult expression he liked to assume when he thought something was outrageous or verging on the ridiculous.

‘Cynthia Hutchinson?' Dennis laughed some more, quietly now, as if he knew things they could never know. ‘You little so-and-so. So
Miss Hutchinson
has a copy and she's going to lend it to you. You just make sure your father doesn't know. Jeez. If my old man knew I was reading a book like that, well, I won't tell you what he would do. They'd probably expel me from school too. My mother wouldn't talk to me again. She says it's dirty, a sex book.'

‘But it's a masterpiece,' Boyd pleaded.

‘A masterpiece! What do you know about masterpiece? Of course it's a masterpiece. It's a masterpiece of sex. It's about what men and women do, and it's not for little boys. It's banned. My parents haven't read it, I haven't read it, your parents haven't read it. I don't know anyone who's read it. Only intellectuals read it. People at university, people who live abroad, in places like Paris and London.'

‘How do you know it's about…?'

‘Sex? Can't say the word, eh?' Dennis laughed again. ‘You don't even know what sex is. Everybody knows it's about sex. That's why it's banned. I could tell you things I've heard but you're too young. Too young!
Tropic of Cancer
, Jeez!' Dennis shook his head in disbelief. ‘Miss Hutchinson is a bohemian. Look that up in your dictionary. A different kind of a woman, the kind men like. A woman of pleasure.'

‘I know about bohemians.' Boyd was indignant. Nevertheless, a
woman of pleasure
appealed to him immediately and made Miss Hutchinson even more alluring. In his mind her colour changed immediately from amber to scarlet, and the fact that the book was considered
bad
only made her more compelling.

‘I bet you do, Professor,' Dennis said, laughing and punching him playfully in the ribs. ‘Only intellectuals and bohemians read that book.'

They were now approaching the club. Every vehicle in Boyd's eye was the Mitchison's Land Rover, every approaching car the Mitchison's Jaguar, cream and lean with the wire wheels and the big round headlamps. But only three supply vans and two other vehicles were sitting in the parking area. Bertram, the watchman, stood on the entrance steps, his baton hanging low at his side. Bertram was always at the club, night and day. When did he sleep?

‘Well, boys, today you become tennis champions,' Dennis cried, parking and vaulting out of the Land Rover. ‘Come with me.' He slung his tennis bag over his shoulders and marched up the steps, winking at Bertram. Barrington and Boyd followed. Dennis took them to the bar, where he threw down the tennis bag.

‘Bartender, a drink for my men,' he commanded in an unusual voice, the sort of voice heard at an end-of-term school play.

Barrington grimaced. In some ways he seemed more grown-up than Dennis. He cast curious looks at Boyd, as if trying to make his mind up about him. He wanted to ask about
Tropic of
Cancer
but decided against it. He would stick to football and cars, subjects about which he was the undisputed master.

Ralstan, the bartender, stopped polishing the three dozen chunky glasses before him and viewed Dennis with amusement.

‘You mean cream soda,' he grinned.

‘Whatever my men want,' Dennis continued in his unusual voice.

Out on the main court, a game was in progress. From the length of the rallies and the crispness of the volleys, the players were obviously not novices. Dennis cocked his ear in the direction of the court, hidden by giant evergreens. He nodded every time the ball made contact with the racket, acknowledging that unmistakable
pock! pock! pock!
in the relative quiet of the day.

‘You boys will be playing like that in a day or two. No, better. Remember, you'll be getting the best teaching available.'

‘Miss Chatterjee taught Barrington,' Boyd said.

‘Miss Chatterjee?' Dennis paused, his face a picture of undisguised admiration. ‘Manjula Chatterjee. You hound dog, you,' he said after a time. ‘She's good. Well, she has to be good to play at the Liguanea Club. Not everybody plays there. I'll teach you the finer points, how to win. In time you'll be good enough to go to Wimbledon or the US Open. Did I tell you I play for the school team? You don't get to play for Munro unless you're up there with the best. Didn't they tell you I got a mention in
The
Daily Gleaner
sports page, picture and everything?'