The Hide Read online

  Now Gravelin is surrounded. They are all looking at her plate. ‘Dashed funny thing, that,’ I hear Donaldson say. I remain seated with my stiff upper lip, but when Gravelin starts laughing, I watch the plate taken from her wavering hand, put hurriedly down on a small table not far from me.

  ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ laughs Gravelin, on an ascending scale, shaking in the grip of Miriam and my sister, her pony-tail flopping grotesquely. She draws in her breath very noisily, giving glimpses of frantic activity in the region of the glottis. Her eyes look straight before her.

  I am frightened and delighted at this hysteria of Gravelin’s. Never before have I witnessed such commotion in a human throat. There is no time, however, to be lost. Move along the wall to the table, take up with trembling hand the slippery teeth. Into the trouser pocket with them. Gravelin still the centre of attention. Nobody sees me leave.

  Fosh . . .

  WHAT FINALLY DONE it was this dumb bloke, coming up and making a scene on the stall. I was still in two minds, I hadn’t decided nothing, but I felt better like, since Mortimer said that about needing a change. He agreed with me, I mean. I had to wait till pay day anyway. There wasn’t no hurry. Then this dumb bloke come up, well for all I know he was deaf and all. He could make noises. Thursday night it was, just beginning to get dark. I’m not convinced in my own mind they should let these sort of people out, that’s what Mortimer says anyway. He wanted a go on the rifles, well you can’t bar them, can you, they’ve got the money. He got hold of the gun like he’d never seen one before. Pointing it all over the place, he was. That’s dangerous. One of them pellets through your eye, that’s all you need. Steady on mate, I told him. Friendly like. Don’t point your gun up there, I told him. You got no quarrel with the heavens. Course I don’t know if he understood me. He was moving his mouth all the time, stretching it like, and these big brown eyes of his looking straight at me, never mind where the gun was pointing. Mortimer laughed when I said that about the heavens. There’s your target, Jack, I said to him. He had his shots, a bob’s worth, nothing happened, but he swore down on the last shot that he’d hit the bull. What I mean by swore down, this stretching got all speeded up and he started making these loud noises and bringing his face up near to mine. Listen, I said, but I don’t know if he could even hear, listen, when you hit the bull the light goes on and your picture is took. In your case mate this did not happen. But he wouldn’t have it. He started thumping himself on the chest and pointing at the target, making these noises all the time, gaar—gaar—gaar, thick and bubbly like it was coming through water. Like he was gargling. He kept getting his face up close and pleading, no other word for it, and his eyes, he had these big brown eyes, dozy eyes they’d be usually but now they looked as if he had a pain. Why he wanted a picture of himself holding a rifle, I do not know. Maybe he had a girl friend, they’ve got their instincts a course, like anybody else.

  Anyway people come crowding round, what a crying shame, cheating a poor defenceless dumb bloke. It was bad for business so Mrs Morris said give him his money back but don’t let him have another go. That’s what I done but I tell you I won’t forget him in a hurry, them eyes of his and them noises. I decided there and then, this is not the job for me. I mean it was disgusting.

  What I thought afterwards was, it wasn’t just whether he hit the bull or not, a bloke would not plead with you over a thing like that, no, it was the whole situation, he was asking me to put things right for him. His faculties. Maybe he could of had plastic surgery if it could of been caught quick enough, I dunno. I couldn’t get this feeling over to Mortimer, he wouldn’t see it, besides I can’t express myself too well, that’s my trouble. Mortimer knows a lot and the thing about it is, he has a wide vocabulary. I personally think Mortimer will make a contribution one of these days. He said blokes like that, cripples and blokes without their faculties, should be kept away from healthy people. They are an affront, he said. His own words. But, I said, Mortimer I said, this bloke was looking at me as if I could give him his faculties back again, what I mean is—It is no use trying to feel what a dumb bloke feels, Mortimer said, and his eyes got bigger because I was arguing like, he hates to be argued with. Well I got scared when I seen that, I hate Mortimer to be angry with me, he might just decide to stop being my friend and once he did that I know he’d never change, it would be for good. You are taking the sentimentalist line, he said. Haven’t you ever heard of neecher? Neecher? I said. Define your terms. Slave morality, he said, looking at me with those big eyes.

  Well I saw a way to get back on the right side of him and that was by saying things against this dumb bloke. Don’t ask me how I knew this but it turned out right. His eyes was nearly coming out of his head, I said, and them noises he made, well, I said, what it reminded me of was a bloke trying to shit and couldn’t. He liked this, I could tell. Just like a bloke straining to shit and couldn’t, I said. That was what he was like, and eyes like piss holes in the snow.

  Mortimer liked this. He laughed and he went back to a more normal look. That’s right, he said. What songs the sirens sang and what a deaf and dumb bloke feels are equally beyond the bloody pale. Well, I couldn’t follow him here but I didn’t let on, a course. You got to keep a sense of humour, in our job, I said. Haven’t you, Mortimer? All the same, I said, I think I’d like a change. I’m going to the Labour, day after tomorrow, see what they got on their books.

  I couldn’t tell from his face what he thought about this, whether he was put out or not. He didn’t say nothing. You said I needed a change, I said. You did say that, didn’t you Mortimer?

  Simon . . .

  WITHIN THE SMALL enclosure formed by the shrubs it is hot. Light slides over the leaves, glosses the magnolia flowers ahead of me a little to the right. Beyond this I can see yellow sickles of forsythia. Trees that go on flowering in spite of all neglect. My arm and shoulders are flecked with sunlight filtering down through the leaves, no doubt my head also and all my prone body. My eyes will be about eight inches from ground level.

  I raise the binoculars and the world blurs, melts, develops a sort of weeping or running grain. Looking thus through the unfocused lenses, I could easily forget my humanity, my element. My hands begin to tremble with the weight. I place the leather case on the ground before me and rest the binoculars on it, tilted slightly upwards. I spend some time focusing, then, beautifully clear and distinct, quite still, a section of hedge, hawthorn and hazel, the fresh green of brambles. . . .

  Almost immediately I see the robin, not at the nest but a little beyond it on the lowest branch of a hazel. The robin is deforming itself for love. Breast feathers puffed out, it edges along the branch, tail stiff and vertical, neck craning up so that beak and tail are parallel. In a while the female will emerge, execute some of her wounded, fluttering rushes, head down, wings spread and trailing. . . . Courtship goes on much longer in birds than is commonly supposed. I lay down the binoculars. I leave them in position and walk quietly to the place where I have left the short-handled pick with which I do my digging, and the plastic bucket I use for conveying away the earth (every particle has to be carried to the secret tip I have established behind the house).

  I have felt for quite some time that a subsidiary tunnel would be a splendid idea, to run at an angle of about sixty degrees from the main tunnel and emerge among the beech trees on the other side of the grounds. If I could complete this I should be able to traverse the whole area without once needing to surface. Starting work this morning, this particular morning, after what Audrey said, is an act of faith on my part or perhaps it is simply the need to negate her words. She has told me I must leave within a month; but if I embark on a tunnel that will take at least six months to complete, then obviously I cannot leave in a month. Thus I try to delude myself, knowing all the time how completely in earnest Audrey is.

  She knew whose the teeth were of course, even though, when Gravelin had been finally quietened, they were no longer to be found on the plate. I tried at first to insinuate
that Gravelin was hallucinated. Did you look closely at the pupils of her eyes? But everyone had glimpsed the obscenity. Audrey looked at me in silence, a scrutiny difficult for me to sustain. But why, Simon? Why, tell me, why. No answer. How could I explain the outrageous symmetry of that mousse, that primeval dome, the tribal noises, and the shocks I had received that day, first the boy and then the gardener? A sudden impulse, Audrey, I said, attempting placatory gestures of the hand. But it is madness, Audrey said. Something in her face aroused flickers of compunction, beneath the queenliness assumed for the interview a genuine hurt, a genuine bewilderment. You know how I worry over these supper parties, how I want everything to be just so, you know all this yet you deliberately . . .

  I enter my tunnel at the rhododendrons and walk slowly along, flashlight moving from side to side. An earthworm, emerging from the wall, sways its purple trunk slowly back and forth, half of it is still plugged in earth. The light lingers on it briefly, giving it a pinkish transparent radiance, then passes on, leaving the creature writhing in the dark to resolve its dilemma, choose earth or air. I count the paces, stop at the place where I have to begin. Now with considerable misgivings I must take up a section of roof over the main tunnel. I must do this, because it is necessary to stand upright, actually in the trench, while I am digging. It is not very dangerous, since practically the whole of me is still below the ground. But if by chance someone were to enter the grounds very quietly, by some other means than the gate (which cannot be opened soundlessly) and take a diagonal path, pausing frequently to disguise the sounds of his approach, after skirting the pond (apparently lifeless but in reality pullulating), he would come upon me from behind, would see a man, head only above ground, wielding with persistence a hand-pick, his scalp below the sparse hairs on the crown reddening from minute to minute with sun or exertion. To avoid providing such a spectacle is my daily care. To guard against it now I glance continually over my shoulder as I work. Regularly, steadily, I swing the pick up and bring it down. . . .

  This house it is finally clear to me is not of dimensions large enough for both of us, Simon. What a frighteningly composed face you had, uttering these words. Like a judge passing sentence, pronouncing for a whole society. So I am giving you a month. There was perhaps a point at which the situation could have been saved. A point before the hurt changed into that judge’s composure. Perhaps when she began the recounting of past wrongs I could have queried some, turned the interview from arraignment to debate; no Audrey you are wrong, I did not drown the Siamese cat of which Howard was so fond, for example. But I said nothing, merely kept up the gestures of appeasement. Let me remind you, Simon, that you have lived in this house fifteen years free of charge, Howard took you in because you were my brother, for my sake, do you think it was for yours? And the least you could have done out of respect for his memory, was to keep up these grounds of which he was so proud. . . .

  Where could I go if I was forced from here? What could I do? Nearly all my little income gone on rent. No privacy, no secrecy, no space. Pedalling off on a bicycle at weekends to watch birds and lovers. All my remaining years spent above ground, in full view. How could I support it?

  The sweat runs down my face. I stop for a breather and watch a ladybird climb up the long stem of a grass about six inches from my eyes. It stops half way up and its spotted carapace splits as though wings would be unsheathed, but nothing further happens. Audrey would try to put some humanness into this beetle, she could never let it alone to be alien, vital organs immersed in blood, skeleton on the outside. She would try to attribute qualities that she could understand, because she is always trying to improve an occasion; that was my crime when I dropped the teeth, I ruined an occasion. In fact, coming to think of it, Audrey smells of the effort; the scent she uses whether it be gardenia, lily-of-the-valley or violets, designed to suggest whatever blend of timidity and consent, to me has a strenuous odour, the odour of countless enhanced occasions. Perhaps that is why she always overacts so terribly, even in the insignificant roles she has so far been given, she is trying to improve the playwright’s occasion for him. . . .

  The ladybird joins its wing-cases neatly, resumes its way along the grass. The red ovals on its back are not regular but of various sizes; not clear in outline either but seeming infused. It reaches the end of the stem and stops again. I look up from it at the sky, empty of clouds and birds.

  After a little while I resume work, I make five trips, my bucket loaded with earth. As I return for the fifth time, just as I am crossing the drive, I hear the gate, not a loud noise, the dull sound of the metal gate striking the stone kerb at the side of the drive. In two strides, still holding the bucket, I am across the drive, in among the rhododendrons. I sink to my knees and crouch there, waiting for whatever might come up the drive.

  The crunch of the gravel. Light rather slow steps. Then round the first curve of the drive, walking slowly with a pronounced hip roll, a young man whom I have never seen before. For five or six yards, I have a clear view. Short, only about five feet six or seven, and thin. Very dark, something foreign looking about him, his hair jet black and curly and shining with oil. Drawing level now. Surely not more than twenty-one or -two, if that. A sullen face. Passing me now, he looks continually from side to side but his head turns only a fraction. I know who you are. I have him for a moment or two in profile, rather Byronic with those curls but without the famous purgative pallor, and with no forehead to speak of, a straight nose and long lashes and a mouth with a very full lower lip, a sulky mouth. I watch his narrow back recede. That swagger and the quiet slow steps, the frequent sidelong glances convey an effect of apprehensive readiness.

  The passing of a total stranger along the drive is an unusual thing these days.

  I wait for some moments, then make my way to a point from which I can observe the front of the house. I see him emerge from the drive. He goes up the steps of the terrace, knocks at the door, pauses, knocks again. Nobody comes. He takes some paces back, appears undecided. He looks away from the house, towards the grounds, towards where I am standing. Then he glances up at the sky, down again at the lawn. He moves along the terrace towards the steps, then stops again, turns, goes back up to the door and knocks once more. This time it is opened immediately by Marion. They exchange a few words and the young man enters. I stand where I am for five minutes, ten minutes, then very quietly go round to the back of the house and let myself in. Marion is in the kitchen, washing up. She looks up at me vaguely as I enter and smiles in her gentle, really rather rabbity way. I notice not for the first time the hairs on her thin arms, the half inch of petticoat showing beneath her skirt. ‘Visitors?’ I say, wrinkling my nose at her as though it were something I had detected by smell. ‘He’s come about the gardening,’ Marion says, her smile disappearing. She turns away from me to go on with the dishes. She is wearing a faded plum-coloured jumper, rather too tight for her, and I notice, again not for the first time, that Marion has very good breasts, small but perfectly shaped. I experience however no desire to dwell upon them, impose on them that isolation always necessary to my enjoyment. I cannot do this with Marion, she is too contiguous, too real, has been ever since the day five years ago when she appeared in the house a whitefaced, skinny child with prominent teeth and completely inoffensive eyes, still dazed by the death of her mother. She has grown since then of course, but has come too near to me to be viewed, too much a part of everyday life, with her skimpy clothes, frizzy perms, fugitive gaze.

  I leave the kitchen, proceed along the passage and so up to my own room where I wait and listen with the door ajar. After what seems a long time for an interview of this sort, I hear the door of the sitting-room opened, and my sister’s voice. I leave my room and take up a position on the second landing of the stairs. Craning my neck I see very briefly the top of the young man’s oiled head. He leaves by the back door, the door to which, of course, he should have first applied himself. My sister passes once more into the sitting-room and I am about to tu
rn back to my own room when she reappears, walks a few paces along the passage almost to the foot of the stairs, then stops dead and stands quite still. This is extraordinary behaviour. If she looked up she might see me but I could pretend to be descending. She does not however look up. Her whole body droops as though with extreme fatigue, and her head is inclined forward. Then, while I watch her in wonder, she straightens herself, raises her head. She lifts her hands to her breasts. She cups her breasts with her hands, remains a moment thus quite still and then with a curiously deliberate gesture, moves her hands down over the breasts and the whole front of her body to the waist.

  Fosh . . .

  THEY NEEDED A gardener all right. I could see that from the start, soon as I got through the gate. You didn’t need to be no mastermind to see that. The drive is gravel a course, nothing much can happen to that, but you only had to look right or left to see nettles and stuff waist high, no, what am I saying, they was at eye level some of them, talk about a jungle. Nothing been done in there for years. I got a feeling going up the drive that I was in the wrong shop. I can sense things. I don’t know if it was because it was all overgrown or what. There was something wrong with the atmosphere like. I could hear myself walking up the drive and I got this very strange feeling that it wasn’t really solid, like just a crust I was on, like ice or the dry crust you get over mud sometimes. I felt I had to put my feet down careful, can’t explain it really. I am psychic, after all, a course. Anyway it never did feel friendly, right from the start and I get a feeling sometimes as I am moving about the place, that there is an Unseen Presence. I told this to Mortimer and he laughed. Mortimer doesn’t believe in them sort a things, atmosphere and that. Mortimer is analytical. I am more the creative type myself. But I like to tell him and I like him to laugh, I expect it, and it gives him pleasure, I can tell, being able to be analytical with me. So it is a good thing all round. It is one of the ways Mortimer and me go together. Wonder what he’s doing now, chatting them up on the stall I expect. Getting them in.