Shuttlecock

[12]

It is now several days since I returned the television to the shop. They all resent me for it — can see that — but apart from one barbed remark from Marian when they came back from their afternoon at Richmond (‘I suppose you think that was clever. Happy now?’), there have been no demonstrations. They’re shrewd enough, I imagine, not to give me the opportunity to crow — ‘No idle threats from me, you see,’ or something of the kind. By Monday the whole matter seemed to have died down, though the week began sullenly enough and Martin, in particular, kept giving me little hard, vengeful frowns.

But today (Friday) — though it really began yesterday — something has happened. Something I can’t help taking very seriously.

The weather has kept up all the week. It seems we are in for a remarkable summer. I have come home, sticky from the Tube and enervated from work, but with enough vigour to muster, on my arrival, a mocking heartiness. ‘Well, who’s for a game of cricket on the common?’ Now the television has gone it seems only proper to take the initiative over healthier, alternative activities. But, as is to be expected, my proposal meets with wilful non-enthusiasm. ‘Suit yourselves then.’ In order to endorse my position, I have often thought of going out alone, not to play cricket, of course, but for solitary strolls across the common. I might even have a self-righteous pint or two at the pub. But in fact, as you know now, I have been more occupied by something else which both the absence of the television and, indirectly, the warm weather have made more feasible. Every evening this week, before and after supper, I have been taking the copy of Shuttlecock from the shelf in the living-room, setting up a deck-chair in the garden and in stubborn indifference to my family, following Dad across occupied France.

Until yesterday, that is, when I came home to find that the copy of the book was gone.

Now I did not act in haste. I checked in my memory that I had actually returned it to the shelf the previous night; I looked elsewhere in the living-room; I made sure it had not been put with the other copy in the bedroom; I asked Marian if she knew its whereabouts; I paused to size the situation. Only then did I jump to conclusions. Martin, Martin. A reprisal.

‘Martin,’ (with feigned casualness), ‘have you seen my book?’

‘What book?’

‘You know. Grandpa’s book.’

‘Haven’t seen it.’

‘Martin, tell me what you have done with it.’

‘Nothing. I haven’t done anything.’

His face had an expression of grim tenacity, which was confession enough.

‘Martin, don’t play tricks with me. Tell me where it is.’

‘How should I know.’

‘Where?!!’

And then anger got the better of me. If my subsequent course of action seems excessive, remember that it was the signed copy (‘your loving Father’) that was missing. Had it been the other copy — you must believe me — I would not have felt half my rage.

With my left hand I seized Martin’s right arm and twisted it behind his back in a sort of imperfect half-nelson. I raised my right hand into a position to strike him across the face.

‘Now! Are you going to tell me?’

We were standing in the living-room. As the shouting began, Marian appeared in the doorway, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Peter, who had been in the garden and who may or may not have been in on the theft of the book, had come to the french windows and was watching apprehensively to see how his brother would shape up. Given my superior strength and the way the sympathies of the family stood, everything favoured Martin being the hero of the moment.

‘I’m going to count to three.’

It struck me momentarily that this confrontation, in all its crudity, was really little different from the sort of set-tos that are commonplace in school playgrounds. This being the case, Martin probably had the advantage in immediate experience; for, despite their unadventurousness at home, I often noticed (it used to puzzle me) that both he and Peter returned from school with cuts and bruises that suggested scraps on the asphalt.

‘One — ’

I jerked his left arm and lifted my right hand a little further. Martin gasped and turned his head to one side. His little face became grimmer still.

Marian stepped forward. ‘If you hurt him, I’ll — ’

‘You’ll what?’

She put a hand out to stop mine. I raised mine still further. I wondered briefly whether to strike Martin or Marian. Martin’s eyes were screwed up, waiting for the blow. I have to admit that everything was blurred and strange. I had a vision of how families fall apart, of how terrible crimes get committed in ordinary circumstances

‘All right,’ I said, dropping Martin’s arm. ‘I don’t have to hit you.’

Instantly, Martin opened his eyes and turned in innocent appeal to Marian. ‘I don’t know anything about it, Mum.’ So well acted.

‘We’ll see about that,’ I said. I pushed past the two of them into the hall and bounded up the stairs to the boys’ bedroom. I looked under Martin’s bed and under Peter’s bed. Opened their clothes drawers. I checked their own bookshelves, taking in the titles: Pioneers of Space; The Martian Menace: Miracles of the Laser. On the wall was an absurd picture of Telly Savalas sucking a lollipop; a faded chart showing details of all the Apollo moonflights. I pulled open the doors to the cupboard in which were stored the accumulated toys of half a decade, and out spilled a tangled mass of gadgetry — ray-guns, limbless action-men, scale models of rockets and lunar modules, a broken pocket-calculator, ribbons of shiny cassette-tape: a cybernetical junkyard. Nothing simple and down-to-earth — like a cricket bat. And no copy of Dad’s book.

I was beginning to consider that I might be wrong in my suspicions, but it was too late to call off the performance.

I went down to the living-room.

‘Well,’ I said reflectively, like an inquisitor considering that direct violence may not be the best ploy. ‘There are other ways of getting it out of you.’

I looked quickly at Marian.

‘Are you hungry, Martin?’

I should explain that every weekday the boys have a large tea at about four-thirty, after they come in from school. Until recently this used to be their last main meal of the day and Marian and I used to have a separate supper at about seven. In recent months, however, with the boys staying up later and later (because of that damned television) and demanding ‘pre-bedtime snacks’, we have shifted towards their eating regularly with us. They are growing boys with massive appetites. The upshot is that they now have both a large tea when they come in and a large supper a couple of hours later.

‘You don’t get anything to eat until you tell me where that book is. Understand? Not tonight, not tomorrow, not — ’

‘For goodness’ sake!’ Marian said.

‘I mean what I say. Martin only has to own up.’

‘But how do you —?’

‘I know. Books don’t just disappear from shelves. Have you got a better explanation?’

About half an hour after this we had supper. I made Martin stand with his face to the wall like a naughty boy in class. I wasn’t going to give him even the partial respite of not being present while we ate. I made a point of asking for large helpings. Peter picked and spooned guiltily at his plate. Sometimes Peter is so tremulous, so mouse-like. I watched Martin. He didn’t turn his head. The backs of his thin legs beneath his shorts wobbled now and then, and I remembered the flavour of childhood punishments: the humiliation, the obscurity of adult motives; the vague feeling of outlawdom; the determination to resist. I did not expect him to own up that evening. In a strange way, I would almost have been disappointed if he had. He had had his tea, after all, and was probably too on edge at the moment to care about the loss of food. But the night would see to it. In the morning, I told myself, in the morning he will break.

At breakfast I followed the same procedure. Martin stood in the corner. He had adopted a martyrish pose which seemed to me wholly contrived. I noticed that he moved his head this time, in a quite deliberate way, as if designed for me to see, though not towards us so much as towards the front window beyond our breakfast table. It was another sunny day; between the cherry blossoms a council dust-cart was grinding down the road. Marian and I were silent with each other. I made a song and dance about enjoying my bacon and eggs. But as the minutes passed, as it drew nearer to the time when I must leave for work, I grew anxious. I knew that the boys left the house about a quarter of an hour after I did. In that quarter of an hour not only might Marian have time to shovel a hasty breakfast down Martin, but she would doubtless pack him off to school, coddled and consoled, with double rations of sandwiches. Martin knew this too. I considered whether it was worth being late to work in order not to lose the battle.

I finished my cup of coffee and got up from the table.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Now, are you going to tell me? I don’t have to rush to work. It’s your last chance. You can turn round now.’

Martin turned. He looked ruefully for some time at his feet and then up, deliberately again, at me.

‘All right.’

‘At last! Good boy!’ I really was relieved, glad — no longer vindictive.

‘I threw it in the dustbin.’ He cocked his head towards the window. The dust-cart had departed from the street. ‘It will have gone by now.’

‘You what?’ I said, advancing across the floor. ‘You what?!’

He pressed his lips together. His face tautened.

‘That was my book!’ With a genuine woundedness in my voice. ‘That was Grandpa’s book!’

‘Grandpa — ’

He didn’t have time to say more before the first slap caught him across the face. Then another. And another. The extraordinary thing was that he didn’t turn or duck away. His feet remained firmly planted on the carpet. It was as if he had bargained all along on these blows. Tears of shock rather than fright or pain filled his eyes, but he kept his head erect and his shoulders square, like a soldier looking to the front while the sergeant screams in his ear. Even as I hit him I couldn’t help but grudgingly admire him; and it was this, rather than Marian tugging at my other arm, that made me stop.

When I did, Martin simple turned, and without hurrying, without clapping his hands to his smarting cheeks or breaking into sobs, walked from the room. I sat down again at the table. I was going to be late for work now. I looked at Peter and Marian, who, surprised as I was at Martin’s self-control, had not rushed out immediately to comfort him.

‘Well, he deserved it, didn’t he? He stole my book.’

I was puffed — and petulant — from my exertions.

Marian looked at me in furious silence, then pushed back her chair and turned to leave the room. But she was scarcely on her feet before the door opened and Martin entered carrying a book. He walked towards me with an air of precarious dignity and put the book on the table.

‘You hit me for nothing, Dad. Nothing at all. I never threw it away.’

I looked at him. Then at the book. I opened it at the flyleaf: there was Dad’s writing. ‘Your loving …’ I looked at Martin again for several seconds. At the book.

The jacket of the original edition has the picture of a man, in silhouette, dangling from an opening parachute. For the first time I seemed to see the terrible vulnerability of this position, and the attempt of the artist to make the image resemble a shuttlecock.

‘Why did you —?’ I started fiercely. But my anger had spent itself. ‘Why did you take it?’

‘Because you took away the television.’

And I suppose, I thought, you want me to follow your example and bring it back.

‘I see. The television didn’t belong to you though, did it?’

But I knew we weren’t talking about just the television. I looked into his face. His cheeks were bright pink from the slapping he’d had. I thought of the cunning with which he must have planned this little operation, and the guile and resolution with which he had carried it out. Those glances out of the window; the readiness to go hungry, to provoke and endure punishment. He was brave, he was resourceful, all right. He was his grandfather’s grandson. His eyes bored into me. How much did he understand?

‘If someone takes something from you — even if that was wrong of them — it’s no answer to take something from them,’ I said feebly.

He nodded, uncontrite.

No, not just the television; but all that went with the television. The Bionic Man and Kojak and Captain Kirk, and all the other made-up heroes who were better than his father. For some unaccountable reason I felt in awe of my own son, as if I should make things up to him, beg his mercy, but I was unable — unworthy — to do so.

I was going to be very late for work.

‘Martin,’ I said. ‘All this was stupid, wasn’t it? Why did you do it?’ Then I added suddenly: ‘Why haven’t you ever read Grandpa’s book? You wouldn’t find it difficult.’

He shook his head — as if sorry for me. I knew he would never read the book. And I understood, too, his complex reasons — part suspicion and contempt, and part some nagging child’s fear (only now did I see it), all of which might have been expressed, and at that very moment, in one word: Loony.