William always enjoyed breakfast-time; it was the simplest time of day. The day before might have been confusing, the day in front of him uncertain, but drinking his tea, approaching the moment when he swallowed his pills, he was at ease. It was when he planned his day. Since his meeting with the enemy (as, following George Weir, he now described them to himself), he had revised his idea of what he should be doing. He believed that he should be making it possible for himself to catch them, should they come again. The details of how he might do this escaped him, but the resolve was there. He worked at it daily – worked at it as if the only alternative was a boredom which would destroy him. He drew a map of the farmland (labouring until he got it right, convinced it would give him a decisive advantage) which showed the paths, the dykes, the fences, the hollows, the bushes, the trees and the outhouses. One copy he pinned up in the kitchen, studying it over the top of his teacup, one eye cocked, the other he took with him on his tours of inspection. He would stop quite often and consult it, as if he was inexplicably lost in his own domain, quite astray. It combined with his semi-military walk, which now came to him almost automatically (and from which he lapsed only when tired), to reassure him.
One day he remembered that he had once been a birdwatcher. He had had binoculars. When had he given up birdwatching? What had become of the binoculars? He couldn’t remember. He would approach the edge of his former life and seem to see – before a well-kept house – a large pile of refuse, gravely smouldering. A vaulted pyre. However he approached it – this point where his life had ceased to make sense – he would be faced by the fire, slowly burning, absurdly slowly. He imagined that all his possessions were in it – his binoculars and his clothes and his watch and his books and his photographs – and that, though it might take a long time, they would eventually be consumed. But the pyre: that he saw smouldering without end.
His sense of responsibility made him irritable. Why hadn’t he been given binoculars? Didn’t they want the job done properly? Didn’t they really care if the machinery was stolen or not? To protect machinery you needed machinery. Binoculars should have gone with the job: it was obvious. With binoculars, he would always have had the advantage. Lying on his stomach somewhere, he could have surveyed the horizon where the farmland dissolved in the haze, and, when he saw shapes emerging from it, danger approaching in one form or another, the chimerical becoming flesh, he could have taken immediate action.
Then he feared that he was overreaching himself. He got the impression, looking round the bare farmhouse, with its crumbling plaster and its ugly oranges and yellows, that this was a job for a simpleton, a semi-invalid or an old man on the point of death. He had been warned not to be heroic; but what was the alternative? The alternative was how he had been when he had arrived: that was how the job was viewed apparently. His feebleness, his debility, which he had feared would count against him when he tried for the job, had actually been in his favour.
His humiliation affected his walk. His stride got longer, his shoulders were hunched, his hands often in his pockets. He recognised that, unable to do the job as he wanted to – with binoculars, a walkie-talkie even (so he thought one morning) one of those small vehicles used by the obese or the elderly on golf courses – he was in danger of doing it badly. His tours of inspection became casual, occasional, as though he was mocking the job as he did it, or doing it in order to mock it. He knew that this would encourage those he had been hired to keep out; and he knew that this might be considered a form of collusion. (Was this how his predecessors, if there were any, had changed colours?)
One day, returning to the farmhouse in this mood, he found that Sheila Weir had called with some vegetables.
“Can I use your loo?” she asked. “At this stage of pregnancy …”
He let her into the farmhouse, half watching as, with little gasps of alarm and anticipation, she hurried to the lavatory. Standing in the hall, he heard her urinate (she hadn’t closed the door), moaning slightly as she did so. Then he heard her stand up and adjust her clothes. He stood very still (as still as he had stood for years), telling himself that this was the innocent arousal of the convalescent.
“How are you?” she enquired, returning. “I thought you looked bored crossing the field.”
“Bored?” he said, remembering how it was possible to be direct with her, scrupulous. “No, not bored. Frustrated. Angry even. I’ve been thinking that my job would be much easier with binoculars. I’ve a lot of ground to cover, you know.”
“Of course,” she said. “Of course! I know that George has two pairs. I’ll get him to come over with one … later.”
He wondered if she was making fun of him (“later” – she had emphasised the word, given it a flourish). He didn’t think so. She was lying back in the deckchair, a hand on her belly, breathing heavily.
“I’m fed up myself, actually. I’m three days overdue and I can’t sleep. I’ve run out of books, but even if I hadn’t, I’d be too tired. Are you up to reading yet?”
“Nearer. I might try. What do you suggest?”
“Oh, I don’t know, William,” she said, as if it wasn’t in her nature to make such suggestions. “I’ll send some over with the binoculars.” She lost interest, then. Remote eyes, her hand still on her belly. Flies on the windowpane, loud in the heat. Once she waved one away, and once, compressing her lips, she blew upwards.
“Can I get you a fan?” William asked.
“Don’t worry, I can’t be bothered.”
“I’ll do it for you,” he said awkwardly, imitating the movements he might make.
She stood up slowly, smiling, and laid a hand on his arm.
“Thanks, but I must go; I’ve the children to collect. Come and see us.”
“Thanks for the vegetables.”
“A pleasure.”
“And I hope you won’t have much longer to wait.”
But she was already reversing the car and didn’t hear. His pleasantry, unheard, sounded suddenly peculiar to him, like part of a parable or incantation … “hope you won’t … much longer to wait …”
After she had gone, he found that the binoculars, promised so readily, seemed less necessary.
Early that evening, William was startled by the sound of rifle fire. At first it was scattered and occasional (in the pauses he imagined figures running about frantically or standing perfectly still), then regular, concentrated. It came from the east, where the land he was responsible for was divided from the land beyond by a dyke and a fence running parallel.
He walked up and down in front of the house with what after a few moments struck him as a purposeless briskness. What did it mean? He rang George Weir for advice – there was an especially loud burst of firing as he held the receiver – but there was no reply. He went outside again. The firing appeared to have spread out now, as if those responsible were moving in opposite directions. William found that without a hypothesis he couldn’t make a move. He remained in front of the house, either walking up and down with that purposeless briskness (as if, crazily, his walk had become an end in itself), or standing still, his chin cupped in his right hand, listening to the rifle fire as if he had never heard anything like it before.
He came to the conclusion that they must be vandals or poachers. If the vandals were capable of silent arrogance, they would be capable of this. And poaching, he had heard, was widespread, and, like vandalism, was taking new and strange forms. (Much, according to George Weir, was taking new and strange forms.) He knew that there were many rabbits, most of them in the tussocky fields beyond the hamlets and most of them healthy. Only a few were ill, struggling with enormous eyes to regain their burrows. (One day, before he knew what he was doing, William had killed one, chopping it on the neck not once but three times, in death its enormous eyes more enormous still.)
At last, having repossessed his adjutant’s walk and holding his map, he set off in the direction of the rifle fire, moving from tree to tree, or, where there were no trees, from bush to bush, once, when he thought that the rifle fire was getting closer, throwing himself on his stomach in the open. Leaning against the trees, he consulted his map, having pencilled in crosses where he thought the riflemen were. After each consultation (glad to notice that his hands hardly trembled as he held the map), he would run, bent double, to the next tree and the next consultation, arriving breathless but clearheaded.
Danger had concentrated him: he sprinted without effort and when he had to do so, he believed that he would be able to deal with the enemy without effort. His theory was that he would find them near the perimeter fence. There was a long gully just beyond it and the muffled quality of the rifle fire made him think that the riflemen had entered it. It was a favourite spot for rabbits and hares. William had often seen them there, basking or frisking between the tussocks and the gorse bushes. So, almost certain that the riflemen were poachers (he thought of a fraternity or guild of poachers, for some reason), he leant against a tree and wrote “poachers” beside the pencilled crosses.
There was a long silence. He could hear absolutely nothing. Crouched behind a bush (in the middle of which he saw torn stained underwear and beer cans), he waited. Without binoculars all he could do was try to interpret the silence. A hard task. Had they killed as many rabbits as they wanted? What were they doing – laying them in a pile before dividing them, or having a smoke? How many poachers were there? What age? Would they walk to the end of the gully before climbing out or climb out here, so that he could see them?
He remained behind the bush, looking at his map, drawing a circle round “poachers”. The delay began to upset him. He knew that he should find out what was happening, and, if necessary, report it to the police. But he would have to cross about two hundred yards to the top of the gully, and he would have to cross it in silence and without cover. His initiative, certainly his most important since coming to the farm, would be taken under the eye of heaven.
He came out from behind the bush and walked towards the gully, the heat and the silence matching each other. He felt that if he could get his walk right – if he could maintain it impeccably across these two hundred yards – he would know what to do when he surprised those in the gully. But if, affected by his apprehension and the uneven ground, his walk went wrong; then he would run the risk of speechlessness at the top of the gully. He would have the air of a doomed trespasser or a half-hearted walker. Of an amnesiac, even. He might even appear only to disappear.
But his walk didn’t fail him. Head thrown back, arms swinging regularly, heels coming down promptly, he approached the gully. A shout made him pause; two shouts made him crouch; a sudden chorus of shouts made him fling himself on his stomach. But in the long silence that followed he was able to get to his feet (saw himself do it, indeed, as from an admiring distance) and proceed without any loss of composure. He went on until he knew that his next few strides would make him visible to those below. He was now certain that they were poachers, and poachers, he believed, were less of a problem than vandals (rogues rather than criminals).
He moved to the top of the gully and saw, disposed below him in a semicircle, three jeeps and about twenty soldiers. They seemed – it was William’s first thought – to be having high tea. They were eating in groups, their rifles beside them. The mood was convivial, almost hearty, young men in their prime together. Only one of the soldiers was standing. He was wearing a green cap and had a stick or cane tucked under his arm. He was eating a roll, his hand and arm – as though he was demonstrating how to eat rolls in the open – held well out from him. It was he who spotted William. He said something to one of the soldiers beside him, and, smiling, tapping his stick on his thigh, started up the side of the gully. His walk was complacently neat: out of uniform, away from the gravity of command, it might have been effeminate. All the soldiers had noticed William now, standing as still as he could on a dry and dusty patch between rabbit holes, his hands behind his back, waiting for the officer to reach the top of the bank.
Still smiling, the officer stopped in front of him. He appeared to want to be exceptionally agreeable. There was a silence behind them, as if the meal couldn’t be resumed until William had been checked over.
“Shooting rabbits?” William said.
“One or two,” the officer replied. “I hope you don’t mind. But that’s not our main business. We’re T.A.”
“T.A.?”
“Territorial Army. Captain Jenkins. Pleased to meet you.”
“William Templeton.”
“Farmer?”
“No, I’m caretaker to these acres,” William answered, remembering how, faced by the professions, he had often been facetious. “A gentleman caretaker.”
“That I see, sir,” the captain said.
William noticed that there were potatoes hanging from the captain’s belt. “I didn’t know it was the potato season,” he remarked.
“These are not potatoes, Mr Templeton,” the captain replied, suddenly unsmiling. “They are grenades.”
“I beg your pardon, captain. I’m fairly ignorant. I didn’t know, for instance, that you had permission to use this land.”
There was loud laughter from the waiting soldiers. The captain merely smiled; but when the soldiers continued laughing, he raised his hand, indicating that they should resume their meal.
“Oh yes: you might say that it’s one of our favourite stamping grounds. We come here every five or six weeks. You must be new.”
“Comparatively,” William said. “I’m certainly new to potato wars.”
“You wouldn’t thank us for using the real thing. No indeed! Don’t worry though; we’re spoken for. We’re licensed.”
“If you say so.”
“Perhaps you’ll allow Lieutenant Jackson and I to visit you later? We can show you the authorisation. I don’t suppose you have many visitors.”
“If you like,” William said, exasperated. “It’s the yellow farmhouse. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you, Mr Templeton,” the captain said, half saluting. “I know the yellow farmhouse.”
William walked away. By the time he had got back to the farmhouse the war in the gully had started again. He didn’t know if it was some trick of the atmosphere or the result of his meeting with the captain and the soldiers, but the rifle fire sounded different now: remote, random, the echoes of shots rather than shots. He spread his map on the kitchen table and, rubbing out “poachers”, wrote: “Territorial Army – Evening Antics.”
It was quite late when the captain and lieutenant arrived. They came by jeep, taking off their caps and putting down their sticks and then lying back in the deckchairs William had got ready for them. Out of the gully and with their caps off, they looked very young. What did they do when they weren’t in the Territorial Army? William didn’t ask; it was enough that they did this.
“Operation over?” he asked.
“Yes. Most successfully, too,” Captain Jenkins said. “Wouldn’t you say so, David?”
“Certainly,” Lieutenant Jackson agreed, lying back with his hands clasped behind his head. “Soon we’ll be ready for the big one.”
“The big one?” William asked.
“Yes,” Captain Jenkins said. “But I’m afraid it’s confidential.”
“Of course. It wouldn’t be the big one if it wasn’t,” William observed.
“Only the small ones are fed to the public.” He was sitting forwards in his armchair, hands clasped about his left knee, holding it as if it was slightly injured.
“So long as you leave the farmhouse standing. And respect my land.”
“Oh, it’ll not be here,” Lieutenant Jackson said, suddenly standing up and crossing to the window, as if thoughts of the big one made him restless. “The big one’s happening up north. Destination unknown.”
“I hope it goes well anyway,” William said.
“Thanks,” the lieutenant answered, returning to his deckchair but not sitting down. Hovering, making a show of his restlessness, he looked down at Captain Jenkins who smiled at him, acquiescent, curious. A young officer in repose, his vulnerability betrayed by the way in which he was obliged to lie back in the deckchair, right back, his quiet easy relaxation under the army clothes making it seem for a moment that he had been miscast, he suddenly stood up and slowly and deliberately straightened his shoulders.
“Can we offer you some plonk?” he asked.
“You’re welcome to have a drink yourselves. Indeed I can even give you some cups. But, as for myself, I’m on the wagon. I’ll not join you, thanks.”
Having said this, William stood up, squaring his own shoulders. There was a silence. It was clear that his guests didn’t know how to take him. His accent was wrong for the job; his manner was variable, now almost friendly, now sarcastic; the farmhouse was extremely bare; and he didn’t drink. Faced by their youth, their preoccupation with their roles, their matiness, he rediscovered his capacity for fantasy. It pleased him, for it was some time since he had been able to speak freely, without care and deliberation.
“I use my job as a cover,” he said. “You must have guessed that. Of course you must! But please go and get your drink.”
They began by drinking lager, for, as they explained to William, these summer manoeuvres were hot work. They gulped it straight from the can, belching between gulps, smacking their lips. Later, their thirst quenched, they would be going on to whisky. They had two bottles of this, one a malt, one a blended. (Would they be drinking it from the bottles too, William wondered, or using his cups?) Apparently Lieutenant Jackson was the regimental drinks buyer and, proud of his reputation, he tried (holding the bottle in his lap like an anaesthetised pet) to talk to William about malt whisky.
“Really, lieutenant,” William protested. “My place on the wagon isn’t that assured! How about women? Or cricket? Or stocks and shares? Or racehorses?”
“We upset you by our presence?” the lieutenant asked, making to rise. “You’d rather we left?”
“No. That’s not what I mean.”
“All right,” Captain Jenkins said, scanning the ceiling and the landscape outside as if in search of other topics. “Tell us then … tell us what your job’s a cover for? Unless it’s confidential, of course.”
The lieutenant laughed loudly.
“I could tell you that I’m a spy,” William began, “appointed by the Home Office to study vandals. There are vandals here, you know. Thieves too. One day they may make my life hell. They come quietly and go for the machinery that’s stored out there. I’m supposed to deal with them on my own. But I haven’t even got binoculars – unlike you fellows – though a pair is promised. I too have superiors, you see, superiors who are rather too remote from the field to appreciate what’s needed. It’s tough.”
He was leaning back now, relaxed so long as he was able to talk. The officers had started on the whisky.
“But if I were to tell you that I was a Home Office spy,” William went on, “it would be a lie, and one can’t have lies. One can’t have lies anywhere. An accumulation of lies is like an accumulation of dead flies on a white windowsill. Eventually the light is affected. No! What I am is a writer. I’ve had a generous advance from a publisher – quite a well known one too – to write a book. A sort of autobiography. My life has been a curious one, quite off the straight and narrow. In a thicket, in fact, without lights and with the strangest noises. So what could be better than being a caretaker? Here, every morning, I write pages which show me what I am and how I became it.”
“A man of education,” Lieutenant Jackson said. His long face and close-set eyes gave him the appearance of one for whom shrewd conclusions were the only currency. “But tell me more about the vandals.”
“Yes,” Captain Jenkins said, “One can’t take that sort of thing lightly.”
“There’s not much more to tell,” William said, realising that it had been a mistake to mention the vandals. He chose his words carefully, but he could see that the officers took this as a measure of the seriousness of the matter. He could see that they pitied him: a writer, not in good shape, up against vandals. He had experienced it so often with drinkers: the sudden conviction that they knew where their duty lay, the imperviousness to all else. There was no way of dissuading them, so his words were lonely ones, barely attended to even by himself, escaping him almost against his will, leaving his lips dry, distressed. “I must make it clear that there aren’t many vandals, and that the damage they do is minimal. I can’t really say it’s a problem. And the signs are that it’ll disappear.”
“Oh, but it may not, William!” Lieutenant Jackson exclaimed, “It may not! It may get worse. What we’d like to know is simply this: can we help?”
“Exactly,” Captain Jenkins said.
“What do you mean?” William asked, though he knew what was coming.
“I mean,” Lieutenant Jackson said, drinking from the bottle of malt whisky, “that we could drive them off once and for all. A few wounded vandals and they’d never come back. That’s how it would be if our police were armed. As they are in America.”
“You’re not trying to suggest that there’s less violence in America? That’s not my impression. My sister …”
“It’d work here. A different climate. I tell you.”
“I’m sorry for you if you’re serious. Anyway, I don’t need that sort of help. I don’t want it.”
“You could say it’s our job,” Captain Jenkins said quietly.
“You could indeed,” nodded the lieutenant.
“You couldn’t,” William objected, looking at then in turn. “It’s a police matter. The police and the army have different roles. Don’t tell me you don’t know that.”
“Our role is broad, William,” the lieutenant said slowly, holding his hands about a yard apart. “Broad! Understand?”
William had stood up.
“No, I don’t think I do understand. Not at all! I think perhaps you had better go. Take your plonk and go. Just keep it a game. All right? Throw your potatoes and fire your rifles in the air …”
“But you’ve not been drinking, William,” the lieutenant said, “you’ve not been drinking! You can’t hold it.”
“Will you go please?” William had stood up and was pointing at the door. “This is as pointless as it is unpleasant.”
“We’ll go,” the lieutenant said, rising. “Your lavatory first though …”
Captain Jenkins had risen too. He was swaying slightly, his look vaguely pitying (as though William was just one of many manifestations of the deviant he would have to meet with in his lifetime), his stick back under his arm. He didn’t speak, adjusting his cap, looking at William – who looked at him in turn – his expression slowly changing, from drunken pity through indifference to contempt. Knowing that he had excited the contempt by standing firm, his silence more concentrated than the captain’s, William stood firmer still, though with the contempt deepening and the lieutenant blundering about in the hall, cursing, it wasn’t easy.
“All right, David,” Captain Jenkins said when the lieutenant came back, “let’s go. We can catch the boys at the Black Bull.”
They left without saying a word, carrying their boxes of drink. The headlights of the jeep swept the farmhouse and William standing before it, the jeep passing very close to him as it made for the farm track and the main road. On the rutted track it bounced and lurched, its headlights picking out the birch trees which lined the track, now their trunks, now their branches, until, with a wild turn into the main road, it was gone into the night.
It was then as silent as William had ever known it. He remembered that with some drinkers certain subjects had to be avoided. Then he remembered that with many of them they could never be avoided, the subjects possessing then even in sobriety, even while their lives appeared moderate, well ordered. He remembered it well: it was the one thing which, in his tiredness, he could remember about them.
Later, going to the lavatory, he found on the cistern the remains of the bottle of malt whisky. Under it was a note.
“Dear Mr Author,
Here you are. Go on! Drink and be damned.
Jackson.”
Very calmly, as though as sorry for the man who had tried to tempt him as he was for himself, who might have been tempted, he poured the whisky down the lavatory and went to bed.
May 10th, 1975
I have nothing against my wife – nothing serious anyway. I enjoy most of the occasions she arranges and I like most of the people she introduces me to. It’s just that so many of the occasions are her occasions. Her stamp is on all of them; she is the sole architect. Have I any ideas of my own about how our social life should go? Sometimes I think so, but then I trace them – to Margo. It’s not made any better by the realisation that it’s to her that I owe some of my highest resolves. To listen to more music; to read more; to set aside time for reflection (though I’ve never been entirely sure what I should be thinking about. The virtues perhaps?)
The feeling that I’m not quite in charge of my own life disturbs me. Sometimes I have thoughts of running wild, of establishing my own terms with a vengeance. For some reason (this disturbs me too) I have few if any thoughts of establishing them quietly, by degrees.
Today I find myself at my daughter’s birthday party. It is being held, not as one might expect in our own house, but in the house of one of Margo’s friends. This is because it is a shared birthday party; the friend’s daughter is exactly the same age as Kathleen. We are outside on the lawn, watching the children, about thirty of them, play about in a pink parachute. It lifts and flops on the lawn like a giant pantomime sea anemone, now showing its insides, now concealing them, threatening to imprison the children. There are screams: one can see the outlines of desperate or mock desperate limbs.
The fascination which we feel isn’t one which will fade, to be replaced by boredom, for we began by being indifferent and then, almost against our will, became fascinated. Conversation died as the parachute, seeming to get larger and larger, more and more capacious, possessed the lawn. Only Margo and her friend, laying out cakes and sandwiches on a long trestle table in the background, aren’t looking at it. But it wouldn’t surprise me to see them and their piles of food enveloped also, for I have seen few things as unpredictable as this parachute. It is capriciousness itself.
Suddenly I notice that Kathleen is trying to get out from under the parachute. But each time she tries she is either dragged back by a child or claimed by a pink fold. I hear her screams, and they seem to me different in quality from the other screams. Pure terror. I walk over to see what I can do and my eye catches a label: Rentaparty Equipment Ltd. I position myself, kneeling, so that Kathleen will see me when the parachute next lifts. Her screams get louder; she has sensed my presence. “Daddy! Daddy!” At last she breaks free, crying distractedly, and falls into my arms. I lead her away. I don’t think that anyone else has noticed. The clumsy will of the huge mobile fungus is still being done and the parents are still standing on the terrace, fascinated.
Soon however other children come out from under the parachute. Eventually it is abandoned. But it still moves. Indeed, in a sudden gust of wind it is blown against the legs of the trestle table, wrapping itself around them. Now Margo takes charge, dropping onto it half playfully, beating it into shape and docility, preparing it – calmly, confidently, as though she did it every day – for its return to Rentaparty Equipment Ltd. She is wearing a summer frock and at one point as she kneels this is blown over her buttocks. She doesn’t care. Have I ever seen her discomfited? No. There are no pauses between her thoughts and the actions expressing them. Her hours and days are seamless apparently. The children sense it too, for no one dares to eat until, the parachute folded and put to one side, Margo returns to the table. She walks up and down its twenty yards – that fluent, slightly abstracted walk – offering cakes, sandwiches, crisps, biscuits, juice. She does three times as much as Elizabeth, her friend. She is also three times as tanned as Elizabeth, although as far as I know the summer has favoured them equally. Poor Elizabeth: no wonder she opts for unobtrusiveness.
Kathleen is reluctant to go up to the table. I try to lead her, pointing to her mother, to the children I believe to be her friends. She is not encouraged. I take her for a walk round the garden, hoping to calm her. She has perhaps noticed that there is no chocolate ice-cream in a golden wrapper on the trestle table, for it is this that she asks for. I sense the approach of one of her tantrums. These are terrible, terribly embarrassing. I couldn’t bear to have all these parents, now themselves up at the table, choosing their cakes and sandwiches with such deadly niceness, witness one of Kathleen’s tantrums. Margo can ignore them, as the books recommend, but I can’t. I become foolish in my attempts to defuse them: jokes, flattery, presents, entreaty, anger. Why do I bother with them? (Is it my secret hope to be provoked into one myself?) Maybe it’s because at their heart I sense the rawest kind of interrogation of reality imaginable. Who am I? Why am I here? Who will tell me?
Unseen, I lead Kathleen from the garden. We tiptoe along the grass verge of the drive, avoiding the gravel. Then we are in the road and our stride lengthens. Suddenly Kathleen is tearless, delighted, skipping ahead of me. I am taking her from her own party! She has promised, however, that if I buy her a chocolate ice-cream in a golden wrapper she’ll return to it and eat cakes and sandwiches and play all the games. (Am I aware that it might be thought that I am handling the problem absurdly? That I am dancing to a perverse tune? Yes, I am aware.) We walk on and soon reach a cafe where an obese but deeply patient Italian woman gives Kathleen an ice-cream and asks about the paper hat on her head. I explain – laughing indulgently, for I too am wearing a paper hat – that we are brief exiles from a birthday party.
Now that she has her ice-cream, I regret to say, Kathleen pays no attention to her surroundings at all. Her shoulders hunch as she eats it, her eyes become hooded. For a moment it seems to me a waste that she has such lovely fair hair. The tantrum and this sullen satisfaction: how upsetting that they are the two poles of her being.
Again we tip-toe along the grass verge of the drive. It is surprisingly silent. I am embarrassed to see why: the children are sitting on the lawn in a circle, eating chocolate ice-creams.
Margo is observing me from behind them, standing very still, her dress whipped by the wind, clearly in tension between exasperation and outrage, her eyes dark and her mouth enquiringly open. I realise that I must say something both witty and redeeming. But I am unable to.
“Is this a rival party or a cop-out?” she asks.
“She was about to have a tantrum, Margo,” I say.
“So?”
“I thought it advisable,” I continue. “A distraction.”
“Really,” she says.
“Once round the block and she’s human again.”
The subject of our conversation has found a place in the circle and is comparing ice-creams with the little boy on her right. At least hers is the only one which has a golden wrapper.