Full of resentment, Magnus looked at his mother in her hospital bed and summoned to mind the first instance of his parents’ mismanagement. They had sent him to school a day late. They had wrong-footed him from the outset. He missed that crucial first day’s bonding and was cast as an outsider.
Stella had him dressed in short trousers with turn-ups and straight pockets, Tuff shoes, knee socks and what she called his nicest gansey. She held his small hand in her small hand crossing the yard from the school gate. Birds sang them in, and mocked their lateness. Stella told Magnus it was good to let the other children settle and to appear just before lessons began. There could be no getting back the lost day, but an exceptional boy could make a late entrance and carry it off. Her son could do that. Everybody said Magnus was so like his mother.
At the door she said to him. ‘You can put one hand in your pocket, if you like. That’ll be good. Not both hands,’ she advised. Teacher wouldn’t like that.
She brought him into the porch, which was stuffed with children’s coats on hooks. She knocked on the inner door and entered without waiting for a reply. The practice was for parents to leave their child here on the first day, to make this the threshold, and to let the child enter the new world guided by the teacher. But it wasn’t the first day, was it? Stella walked him into the classroom, stood for a moment and took in all the children as though she were choosing who she would sit beside. She was doing it now in a hospital ward, despite her delirium – looking to seize pole position. On this first day of school that wasn’t the first day, Magnus saw that she was flirting with the matronly teacher, smiling and flashing her eyes impossibly on his behalf. This was very good or very bad for him – he didn’t know which – but in any case, it was unforgivable.
Stella watched while Magnus was seated at a double desk beside a fidgety girl with rosy cheeks and straw hair.
‘Now, who’s that little girl?’ Stella asked from across the room.
‘This is Elaine,’ the teacher said.
‘Elaine,’ Stella repeated, as though it were a very special name.
Stella had made a particular effort dressing and making up. Her perfume followed Magnus and the teacher to his desk. He didn’t want to look at his mother when he sat down, but he did, and she waved to him. All the children were watching. The teacher nodded meaningfully to indicate that it was now time to withdraw. Stella blew a kiss to Magnus before leaving. She didn’t close the door properly after her. It squeaked open on its hinges. Her high heels clicked on the porch tiles, and on the granite step. Their perfectly measured clicking carried all the way across the schoolyard.
Magnus sat perfectly still. He looked straight ahead, at leaves lifting on the breeze outside the window. He kept one hand in his pocket. It was a tight fit under the desk. He didn’t move, even when he got a prod in the back of the neck. Little Magnus, already the civil servant.
In the hospital now, he was thinking that his mother’s head appeared to be made of lead, such was the dent she made in the pillow. Her eyes fluttered under their lids and sprang open.
‘I see you got your hair cut,’ she said, completely alert.
‘Yes, well … ’ Magnus had the same short hair he had maintained for fifteen years or more now. He had a standing arrangement with his Ritz Hotel barber.
‘Did you cut it?’ Stella asked, turning her blank face slowly to the elfin nurse.
‘No,’ the nurse replied with a professional smile and a shake of her head.
‘Are you in Trinity, too?’
‘No, Stella,’ the nurse said.
‘But you smartened him up anyway.’
‘He’s well turned out, isn’t he?’ the nurse said, managing to make her words non-flirtatious. She was on a morale-boosting round, so she was prepared to linger a short while.
There was no light and shade in Stella’s voice, no irony or significant change in tone, so when she asked Magnus if he was here to give her some of his weed, it had the same spurious credibility as the rest of her mumbling.
‘What are you saying, mother?’ Magnus’ formal use of the word ‘mother’ was a clear indicator of alarm.
‘Your weed. Your college weed. Are you here to give me some?’
‘Eh, no.’ He shook his head indulgently at the nurse, who, evidently, was going to stick around a little longer.
‘I’d like to smoke it,’ Stella droned.
It had been a long time since Magnus had smoked anything at all. It was absurd that his mother would want to repeat a one-off experiment from the distant past. ‘I don’t think you need to smoke weed, mother. You’re already there.’
‘You said it would do me good,’ she protested, though it didn’t sound like protest.
‘Yes, well … ’
The nurse was enjoying this interlude. ‘Are you not comfortable, Stella?’
Again, the face turned slowly. ‘He tells me it’s good for me.’
‘Does he?’
‘I like it the odd time.’
‘We’re looking after you now, aren’t we?’
‘His father needs a dose.’
‘I’ll look after him,’ Magnus interjected, ‘you needn’t worry.’ He was trying to turn this mad half-speed conversation around in a witty manner, but it wasn’t working. ‘I’ll arrange smokes for everybody, but all in good time. How about that?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ his mother told him. ‘You won’t get him smoking.’
‘I suppose not,’ Magnus replied, suddenly despondent.
‘We’ll have it now, will we? We’ll see what there is, won’t we, nurse?’
‘We’re looking after you, aren’t we, Stella?’ the nurse said, leaning in and cocking her head.
Magnus’ mother grunted and turned to the wall. ‘It’s a bloody disgrace, this place.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ the nurse confided in a theatrical whisper, and moved on cheerily.
Magnus thought a moment about the weed he had given his mother to smoke in his college days. The pleasure he had got from giving it to her. He remembered marvelling at the limited effect it seemed to have on her.
Stella had always liked Magnus’ boyishness, and his doing boy things to please her. Smoking what she called his college weed was part of that. Magnus looked at her shrivelled hands now. They reminded him of the chicken’s feet the grocer kept aside for Magnus on Saturday mornings, so he could pull the bleached white tendon to make the claws contract. The anaemic grocer with the red nose liked Mrs Sparling very much, liked the amused growl she let out when the chicken’s foot moved in the boy’s hand. It was he who had shown him how to work the tendon. Magnus was better at it than the grocer, who had thick fingers. In those days Stella went from one shop to the next. She would be received personally in each. Attention was given to Magnus to gain Stella’s approval, to initiate the flirtation.To this boy the ritual seemed to take forever, when really what these men wanted to do was tongue-kissing, which didn’t require any of the talk. Aunt Charlotte would have gone straight at it were she bothered, Magnus was sure. It was a parade with eggs and onions and ‘a lovely bit of steak’. Eventually, two string bags would be filled. One would go in the basket on the front. Magnus would have to hold the other between his chest and his mother’s behind. That left just the one hand with which to hold on.
Magnus was drawn out of his little tortured reverie by a groan from Stella. He couldn’t tell whether or not it was a genuine expression of physical discomfort.
‘Why did they shoot you?’ Magnus asked. He wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. He wanted to move on.
‘It was a mistake,’ she replied without hesitation.
‘A mistake? I see.’ He had hoped they were past this nonsense.
‘They thought I was somebody else,’ she explained.
‘Right.’ Magnus could feel the bile build in himself.
‘They might try again,’ she said. ‘They might make the same mistake.’
Magnus had to admit this was all very present of her and well reasoned, given her chemical craziness. ‘I suppose they might,’ he replied in a most considered tone.
‘Now,’ he said with a sudden and grand air of finality,’ I’m off.’