He Wants

16. He does not want the boy to be spoiled

EVEN WITHOUT HIS glasses on, Lewis can see that the units in Sydney’s kitchen are the originals. The fixtures and fittings, the table and chairs and the lino floor tiles must be as old as he is. He wants to say to Edie, ‘Look, this kitchen is older than ours and is just fine.’ But it is years since Edie won that argument, years since they had their new units put in, their new floor laid.

‘What do you want?’ asks Sydney, opening cupboards, offering cocoa, Horlicks, Ribena, but Lewis says no, no — he does not want any of these things.

Sydney, with hands still dirty from lying on the ground being kicked by Barry Bolton, fills the kettle and opens a cupboard. Looking for teabags, he finds Marmite that is years past its sell-by date and a jar of pickled beetroot gone brown and soft and falling apart. ‘I didn’t think these things ever went off,’ he says, opening the pedal bin to dispose of these expired products and finding it stuffed full. ‘Empty the bin,’ says Sydney. If Sydney were Ruth’s boy, Lewis would say, ‘Please. Please empty the bin.’ When he does this, he sounds as if he is begging, pleading with him. ‘Please,’ he says as he stands there holding the last biscuit just out of the boy’s reach, ‘I want it, please.’

Lewis reaches down, knots the top of the bin liner and lifts it out. Taking the rubbish to the back door, he steps outside and makes his way to the wheely bin. It is, in that moment, as if he lives here, as if he lives here with Sydney, like the Odd Couple: Lewis puts the rubbish out while Sydney makes the tea.

His daydream is interrupted by the sound of breaking glass. It came from the street. He can’t tell how close it was. He can hear children laughing and running.

Lewis lifts the lid of the wheely bin, to put the rubbish safely inside, but he finds the bin full to the brim. He has to leave the lid gaping, the bin bag exposed, balanced; it will be got at by foxes, which will tear it open.

He returns to the kitchen, where Sydney, having found what he needs, is making the tea, making a cup for Lewis as well. Sydney adds three sugars to his, and Lewis thinks of Ruth’s boy, who asks for sugar sandwiches and leaves the licked bread on his plate, who wants jelly for breakfast and sweets while his mother is cooking the dinner and pink syrup in his bedtime milk. Lewis imagines the cavities that might already be forming in the boy’s baby teeth.

The boy starts sentences with, ‘I want,’ before knowing what it is he really wants. ‘I want,’ he says, ‘I want, I want, I want…’ Even at night, in his sleep, the boy calls out, ‘I want it!’ and, ‘Give it to me!’

Lewis does not want the boy to be spoiled.

They drink their tea sitting on the doorstep, eyeing the night. The children seem to have disappeared and it is quiet now. Sydney takes out his electronic cigarette and Lewis asks after his parents. ‘My mum’s long gone,’ says Sydney. ‘My dad died recently, after a fall.’

‘Were you there?’ asks Lewis.

Sydney shakes his head. Finishing his tea, he gets to his feet and goes inside. Lewis follows him.

‘Come through,’ says Sydney, treading on the heels of his trainers to take them off. He’ll ruin them, thinks Lewis, watching him. Lewis leaves his slippers on because his feet are cold.

In the living room, Lewis looks around, taking in a faded version of familiar wallpaper dotted with pastoral scenes. Sydney, standing in front of a bookcase, removes one of the books. ‘You left this here,’ he says. Without his glasses on, Lewis can’t read the title of the book, but he does not say so. Thanking Sydney, he takes it, putting it down on the coffee table.

‘The house has been sold,’ says Sydney. ‘I’m going to go abroad.’

‘Again?’ says Lewis.

Sydney says nothing for a moment and then he says, ‘I’ve never really seen another country.’

‘What do you mean?’ says Lewis. ‘You were born in India.’

‘I was little when we left. I don’t remember it at all.’

‘Oh,’ says Lewis, recalling how Sydney, with his pins in his map, used to talk about going back there. ‘Did you never go?’ he says. ‘You never visited the gold mines?’

‘No,’ says Sydney, going to a window and peering out. ‘I don’t think there’s much left of them now. They were used as nuclear testing sites in the 1980s.’ He draws the curtains.

‘You’ve been to other countries though. You spent your whole childhood on army bases.’

‘In England.’

‘Oh,’ says Lewis. ‘But you’ve travelled. You’ve been to Tokyo and Thailand. You’ve been to Germany and Scandinavia.’

Sydney shakes his head. ‘I’ve had a lot of time to read,’ he says.

Lewis stares at Sydney, with the same look on his face that Lawrence had when he discovered that Lewis was not on the Sunday school trip that he ought to have been on and was instead up a tree behind the house. Looking out of an upstairs window, it had become clear to Lawrence that Lewis had not got on the coach to the seaside after all but had been on a branch all day long, reading books. Lewis remembers his father standing at the foot of the tree, calling up to him, ‘You’ve got to come down sometime.’ When Lewis finally descended, his father said to him, ‘You live in books,’ and then he took the books out of Lewis’s hands and hid them somewhere.

Sydney goes around the room, drawing the rest of the curtains and putting on lamps.

‘You wanted to see the Wonders of the World,’ says Lewis.

‘I haven’t even seen one.’

‘I think there’s only one left, apart from ruins.’

‘That’s the old ones,’ says Sydney. ‘They add new ones all the time. I plan to see them all.’

He moves towards Lewis, raising his hand towards Lewis’s cheek. ‘What are these?’ he says, tugging at Lewis’s sideburns as if they might come off. ‘Come upstairs,’ he says. ‘I’m going to take my clippers to these.’

Lewis reaches up and feels his own sideburns. ‘I don’t know,’ he says, but even as he says this he is following Sydney into the hallway and up the stairs. They go past the open door of Sydney’s bedroom and into the bathroom, where Sydney sits Lewis down on the toilet seat lid. He opens the bathroom cabinet and takes out some clippers, which he plugs into a ‘SHAVERS ONLY’ socket. Lewis wonders about this, about why such sockets should be for shavers only, and what would happen if he tried to plug in some other electrical item, something he shouldn’t. The worst that could happen is that the appliance would not work, or the fuse might blow. He pictures electricity fizzing dangerously inside the ancient cables in the walls.

Sydney comes over to Lewis again, standing close to press the vibrating device against his skin, his jaw. Neither speaks. Lewis listens to the clippers’ buzz, the sound both soft and loud like a lawnmower, like insects on a windowsill. The wiry hairs succumb with a crackling sound like static. Sydney moves around him, touching the head of the clippers to Lewis’s cheekbones, brushing at Lewis’s face with his free hand.

It does not take long. After no time at all, Sydney switches the clippers off, steps away and says, ‘You’re all done.’

Lewis stands and looks around for a mirror, but there isn’t one.

‘There’s a mirror in my bedroom,’ says Sydney, and he leads the way, although Lewis knows where it is, and he follows even though he won’t be able to see himself clearly anyway.

He stands in front of the bedroom mirror, into whose frame Sydney has stuck postcards from around the world, pictures of places he wanted — or still wants — to visit. In the remaining space, Lewis can see his face in soft focus. He sits down on the edge of the bed, where he sat before, when the horses’ hooves were drumming on the road outside and an ice cream van played ‘Greensleeves’, stopping halfway through, leaving a high note hanging in the air. Sydney sat next to him, his nearest leg pulled up onto the bed, his trousered knee pointing at Lewis, who suggested jiu-jitsu before being interrupted.

‘Whose ear did you bite?’ says Lewis.

‘What?’ says Sydney, frowning at him.

‘You bit a boy’s ear in the playground — whose was it?’

‘Did I?’ says Sydney. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘You made me think of Dracula.’

Sydney shows his weathered teeth as he sits down next to Lewis. ‘Tonight is mine,’ says Sydney, and Lewis wonders what time it is. He looks around the room for a clock, not seeing one on the wall or on Sydney’s bedside table or on his desk. He remembers Sydney’s sheaf of stories, held together by a rubber band. He remembers someone — a scientist — talking about rubber bands that spend their life stretched around a package, the molecules in them pulled out straight, and the whole time they’re straining to contract, trying desperately, year after year, to kink.

He says to Sydney, ‘Do you still write?’

‘Yes,’ says Sydney, ‘I still write.’

‘Have you had anything published?’

‘You’re familiar with Bliss Tempest.’

‘Yes,’ says Lewis.

‘I’m Bliss Tempest,’ says Sydney.

It takes Lewis a moment to make sense of this. ‘You’re Bliss Tempest? You write the Bliss Tempest books? My wife read every single one.’

‘Now I write stories in which everyone gets what they want,’ says Sydney.

Lewis thinks about Edie’s Bliss Tempest novels, the characters that Edie likened to him, the men to whom Sydney has given all kinds of adventures. He feels a touch of envy towards them.

Sydney reaches out and touches the back of Lewis’s neck. The palm of his hand is rough. Lewis worries about the dirt on Sydney’s fingers touching the neatly sewn-up wound near his hairline. He does not say anything though; he does not ask Sydney to take his hand away. Sydney gives the back of his neck a squeeze.

Lewis has just opened his mouth to say something else — ‘Oh,’ he says — when Sydney reaches for the elasticated waist of Lewis’s pyjama trousers. He leans in and Lewis feels Sydney’s teeth on the soft lobe of his ear, and then his own fingers are touching Sydney’s torso, feeling his ribs and the chest hairs that will be grey or white beneath the yellow T-shirt whose logo means ‘Just Do It’; he is dressed like a boy. And Lewis, too, wearing pyjamas with a vest underneath, feels like a boy on a sleepover, or an OAP.

He has some trouble with the button on Sydney’s trousers, due to a touch of stiffness in his joints; it is worse in the winter. Then the button falls off and Lewis picks it up off the bedding and puts it somewhere safe — on the bedside table — for sewing on again later.

He turns back to Sydney, who is lying down now, with his grey hair against the primrose yellow of his pillowcase. Lewis lies down next to him. Comfortable between Sydney and the wall, he could almost close his eyes and sleep.

He does not though. Instead, they make so much noise that the dog, downstairs somewhere, starts barking, and she is still barking when they are lying, later, exhausted on the floor, each feeling the weight of the other — an arm across a chest, a thigh across a thigh — and Sydney with his hand on his own heart.