1 1
‘DON’T SEND IT,’ Tess said.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s not you. Not how you really are. It’s mean.’
‘It’s how I feel.’
‘You feel mean?’
‘The way she goes on about love. I don’t want her here and I’m not going to lie.’
‘You don’t have to. All I’m saying is you should put it better. All this about persecuting trespassers – you’re talking about your girlfriend, for Christ’s sake! And not wanting to be reminded of the nice times you spent together, and telling her she’s asking stupid questions.’
‘Depends how you read it.’
‘So why show it to me? You asked what I thought. That’s what I think.’
We were sitting drinking coffee at the toll-house table (which, persuaded by Tess, I’d sanded down to fresh wood during the last few days and then waxed), on the Sunday morning two days after Adam and Gill’s letter arrived. Sundays were free days, no tolls, a day off. It was ten thirty, and one of those bright still quiet autumn mornings when the sun’s warmth recalls high summer and the sky is a hazed blue. All the leaves die in Technicolor.
Tess’s Sunday morning visits began as a duty chore, sent by her father to check I was OK, and became a regular habit we both enjoyed, looked forward to, though we didn’t tell each other this at the time. She always brought fruit or veg out of their garden or a slab of home-made cake, which she said, untruthfully, came from her mother, or something from the estate farm – butter or jam or eggs or cheese. Given the ‘mod wage’ I was trying to exist on, I’d have been pretty pinched without this help.
I coveted her acts of friendship, they made me feel better, though I tried to hide this from her. But I did try to be ready with something for her so the gift-giving wouldn’t be one-sided. As I hadn’t much cash, at first the presents were usually objects I’d found and ‘treated’. Once a piece of wood I pulled out of the river that happened to resemble a fish, which I cleaned and painted with an eye and a mouth, and clear-varnished to give it a wet look. Once a George the Third silver shilling I dug up in the garden while clearing an overgrown corner, and buffed up bright.
[– See what I mean about men and gifts! Not that I wasn’t pleased. It’s one of your nicer characteristics – you can be thoughtful when you don’t need to be. But I didn’t want anything back. You just didn’t feel comfortable receiving presents without squaring the account!]
After a couple of weeks I started writing poems for her, comic verses to begin with, as a joke. Because of her studying English Lit. We had that in common. We talked about her exam books. One week I gave her a parody of a poem by Ted Hughes she’d found difficult, a pig of a poem about pigs. After that, without thinking about it, it seemed natural to write more serious stuff. I made up the lines while collecting tolls or working on the house or mucking about on the river, and wrote them down and polished them in the evenings. It filled the time and I enjoyed it more than I expected. Soon I was writing two, even three, a week. (When I read them now they make me cringe. How could I ever have thought them worth giving anyone! Two years is an age. But it got me started, and I haven’t stopped since. I discovered then that writing feels like a natural part of me: something I was born to do.)
‘So why show me her letter?’ Tess said, flipping it back across the table. ‘You’re going to be rotten to her anyway, aren’t you, whatever I say?’
‘No, I’m not! When I tried before, half the trouble was I didn’t know what I wanted to say. So I made up the sort of thing I thought she’d want to hear.’
‘Like?’
‘Oh, about this place, and what I was doing. But I hated it. It was all an act, nothing to do with what I really felt. Not that I was feeling anything much. Just getting through each day. You know how I’ve been. The Glums. I sure as hell didn’t want to write letters about that to anybody, Gill least of all. She knows about it anyway.’
‘You’re not so depressed now though, not like when you first arrived. You looked pretty bombed then, I can tell you.’
‘Couldn’t have stuck it without you.’
‘No, well –’
‘I spent a lot of time on that letter.’
‘Look, you really want to know what I think? Make up your mind whether you want Gill or not. If you do, write something more loving, because, honestly, if I was her, that letter would upset me a lot. But if you don’t want her, break it off, don’t keep her hanging on, hoping. It’s not fair.’
She was right, I knew.
We sat in silence, me avoiding her eyes and feeling myself losing my grip and slithering back into that dark craggy pit I’d been clawing my way out of these last few weeks, even beginning to think I might have escaped. But no. Like the nightmare when you’re fleeing from some murderous maniac, you turn to look behind, see nothing, he’s gone, you breathe at last, and turn back relieved, and there he is, right in front of you, overwhelming, unavoidable, his axe coming straight at your head – and you wake up in the nick of time.
Depression, and I’m a first-hand expert, gets treated in two ways. Either you’re told you’re sick, and given pills to dull the effects by stupefying you into silence so that you stop getting on everyone’s nerves, or you’re told you’re a malingerer, a wimp, who ought to pull yourself together and stop moaning, because there’s a lot of people in the world who are worse off than you.
There is a lunatic fringe as well, a school of Holy Joes who tell you depression is a sin, a wilful wallow in self-pity which any decent Christian atheist ought not to indulge in – as if depression were a punishment for being a narcissistic wanker.
Having suffered from it for most of my seventeenth year I can only say it never seemed to me to fit any of these diagnoses. It always seemed more of an affliction, like having a hand go out of action for no good reason so you can’t do all sorts of everyday things you usually do without thinking, and have to put up with this temporarily useless limb flailing about, knocking things over and thumping people, causing trouble and embarrassment. While at the same time you’re being slowly strangled (because your throat seizes up), and your guts chum like a sewage tank in labour (because you’re worried sick about all sorts of minor problems that suddenly seem like major catastrophes), and your mind endlessly turns over the evidence of your complete failure as a human being until you’ve not a particle of willpower left to make yourself do anything except stare into space.
In my opinion depression is a disease caused by thinking too much about all the things you can only do well if you don’t think about them at all.
‘Look,’ Tess said, standing up, ‘it’s a lovely day, there won’t be many more like it this year, what are we doing sitting here? Let’s take the boat upriver and I’ll treat you to a drink and a sandwich at the Fisherman and Pike. I’m rich, would you believe!’
2
Tess went out to prepare the boat while I tidied up. She came back chuckling.
‘There’s a boy on the bridge playing Pooh-sticks.’
‘What?’
‘You know – dropping sticks into the river, then running to the other side of the bridge to see which one comes through first. Don’t you remember? Winnie-the-Pooh.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Dad used to play it with me when I was a kid.’
‘So what’s funny about a kid playing it now?’
‘Well, he’s not exactly a kid, he’s about our age and he’s by himself, and –’
‘Let him. It’s my day off.’
‘He’s having fun. I felt like joining in.’
I went to the window which gave a view along the bridge.
Adam, stood precariously on the parapet, a piece of stick in each hand which he drops with exaggerated care at the same instant, jumps down, races to the other side, leaps onto the parapet with breathtaking aplomb – and in my sweater and jeans, both the worse for his wear.
‘Hey!’ I shout uselessly and sprint out of the house, Tess calling after me ‘What’s up?’ and following to the door.
Adam sees me coming and waves a greeting as to a friend he’s been waiting for.
‘What about my clothes?’ I shout as I approach.
The affable smile fades. He jumps down. ‘Eh?’
He looks at himself. ‘Oh, these.’
‘Why didn’t you change before you left?’
He frowns.
‘I need that stuff. My only spares, you see.’
‘Right, sure.’ He smiles suddenly, his handsome cheeky grin. ‘I’ll change now. That’s why I’m here.’
‘You’d better come in.’
Tess is waiting at the door.
Wanting to head off friendly exchanges, I say, ‘This is Tess. He’s Adam.’
‘Adam,’ Adam repeats as if prompted. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ Tess says.
‘The visitor on Friday,’ I say with warning emphasis.
Adam goes into the living room. Tess rolls her eyes at me in a mock swoon. I poke my tongue at her. She follows Adam. I go into the bedroom for his clothes, intending to call him in to change. But before I can, I hear Tess say, ‘We’re rowing upriver for a drink and a sandwich. Want to come?’
Adam says, ‘I’m skint.’
‘My treat.’
‘Well . . . sure, thanks! I’ll row if you like. Pay my way.’
‘Great.’
What! I think – first my clothes, now my Sunday. What’s going on here, what have I done to deserve this?
I join them.
‘Adam’s coming with us,’ Tess says with the forced cheeriness people adopt when they know they’re going against what you want and are pretending it’s all right.
‘Your clothes are in the bedroom,’ I say, ignoring her.
‘He’s not going to change, is he?’ Tess says. ‘You know what boats are like. Ours anyway. He might as well wait till we get back.’
‘Why didn’t I think of that!’ I say and stalk out ahead of them.
3
In the leaky old clinker-built dinghy only just big enough for the three of us, Tess has the tiller, and I’m beside her in the stern facing Adam who is rowing. Our legs interleave. Adam pulls us upstream with steady effortless strokes. His body has an animal perfection in its proportions, the neat way all its parts fit together, the easy relaxed way it moves, beautiful to watch, very sexy. Tess can’t take her eyes off him, which hurts me with a double jealousy – of that animal body, and of its effect on Tess – so that I resent Adam’s disturbing presence more than ever.
But being rowed in a boat on a calm river on a warm morning has a soothing effect. Soon I’m lulled, as I remember being lulled as a little boy, by the lazy motion of the boat, and begin to take pleasure in Tess’s body squashed up against mine, and Adam’s slow, rhythmic movements, and the in-out plashings of the oars, and the glazed autumn colours of the river bank.
I think: I ought to be glad of this, ought to be giving myself to it, not begrudging, not grinding my guts with jealous resentment.
After a while, curiosity getting the better of her, Tess asks, ‘Where are you from, Adam? Not from round here.’
He shakes his head. ‘Up north.’
‘Thought so from your accent.’ She looks at me, askance. ‘Two of a kind.’
She waits. Adam takes two more strokes but he adds nothing. ‘On holiday or something?’
‘Something.’
‘A job?’
‘Anything.’
‘How come?’
He takes another stroke, watching his right-hand oar rise, skim, plunge. ‘They chucked me out.’
‘Who?’
‘Parents. Well – my dad.’
‘Chucked you out?’
‘Hasn’t got a job himself. And I’ve two sisters still at school.’
‘But chucking you out!’
‘We didn’t get on either. Kept having rows. I’m better off out of it.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘Couple of months ago.’
‘Poor you!’
He shrugs. ‘I get by.’
For some reason I don’t believe a word of this but I can see Tess does. He gives her that smile, but his eyes have a wary look, observing the effect. A look that bothers me. For a moment someone else inhabits those eyes, not the boy with the foxy grin.
4
The pub is packed with a Sunday crowd of junior yuppies from the posh commuter end of the village vying with university undergrads from across the river for the quickest-wit-of-the-year award and pretending not to pose. We manage to order with difficulty, being obviously members of the shoddier classes if not definitely under-age untouchables.
While we wait for our sandwiches a cohort of noisier undergrads challenges a squad of yahooier yuppies to a yard-of-ale competition.
‘What’s that?’ Adam asks.
Plastic aprons to protect the yuppies’ designer informals and the undergrads’ unwashables are handed across the bar while a barman decants two and a half pints of beer into a metre-long glass tube with a bulb at one end and a trumpet-flared opening at the other.
Tess tells Adam, ‘They have to drink all the beer from that thing like a glass hunting horn, which is called a yard-of-ale. They have to drink it at one go without spilling any, which is pretty hard to do. The one who does it the quickest and spills the least is the winner.’
‘Cruel!’ Adam is fascinated.
‘Don’t they do it up your way?’
‘Not that I’ve come across.’
‘Round here they say it sorts out the men from the boys.’
‘Or the disgusting from the gross,’ I add, ‘the real aim being to see who spews up first.’
A podgy yuppy, the kind of over-eager bod who’ll do anything to be thought a big man by his mates, has started the match off. He’s a third down and has gone too fast. The trick is to take it at a steady gentle speed, swigging rhythmically so you’ve plenty of breath for the worst part, which is at the end when you have to lean back far enough to raise the tube nearly upright in order to empty the last of the beer out of the bulb. By then your arms are tired, you’re just about gasping, and leaning back makes it very hard to swallow.
‘Easy . . . easy . . . easy!’ the yuppies chant, neo-soccer. The students whoop derisively. Both have the effect of over-exciting the already over-excited dolt. He raises the yard too fast. Beer floods out of his mouth, down his front, onto the floor, and puddles round his feet. As he gulps for breath someone rescues the yard. His clothes are soaked. The reek of body-warmed beer fills the room. His supporters mockingly commiserate; the students cheer. The yard is refilled as an undergrad is prepared by his seconds who camp up the boxing image – extracting the piss out of the whole business in general and of the yuppies in particular.
Our sandwiches arrive.
‘I’m eating mine outside,’ I say.
‘Got to see this,’ Adam says.
‘Suit yourself.’
Tess says, ‘I think I’ll go outside too.’
‘I’ll come in a minute,’ Adam says, not taking his eyes from the arena.
5
The tables in the garden were occupied so we sat dangling our feet over the stone-paved edge of the river bank where, in summer, holiday boats moor for visits to the pub.
‘For God’s sake, don’t encourage him,’ I said while we ate.
‘Why not? I like him.’
‘I told you – he wants to stay.’
‘He’d be fun. No one would mind.’
‘I’d mind. There’s something odd about him.’
‘Odd?’
‘The way he looks sometimes.’
‘You just don’t want any competition.’
‘Rubbish! Anyway, it doesn’t matter what you think, the toll bridge is my place, I’ll decide who stays there, thanks.’
She laughed. ‘I’m going to call you Janus.’
‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’
‘The Roman god? Well, pre-Roman actually.’
‘Don’t know any gods, I’m glad to say.’
‘You ought to know Janus, though. For one thing he’s the god of bridges.’
‘Terrific.’
‘As well as doors and passages and archways. And he has two faces. So he can see what’s coming both ways, I suppose.’
‘Or going, depending on how you look at it.’
‘You keep the bridge and you’re also two-faced, so I’ll call you Jan, son of Janus.’
‘Compliments now.’
‘Well, you are. In the nicest possible way of course.’
‘And what way is that?’
‘Take Adam.’
‘You take him, you’re the one who’s after him.’
‘What?’
‘You say he’s odd but really you’re jealous because he’s more good-looking than you and because I fancy him.’
‘I get it – it’s the truth game.’
‘And you’re being two-faced about Gill, who you’re keeping on a string while making eyes at me.’
‘I like that! You don’t mince words once you start.’
‘I’ve been kind to you till now because you weren’t very well.’
‘But not any more?’
‘I reckon you’re about as normal now as you’ll ever be, don’t you, Jan dear?’
‘Prefer my proper name, if you don’t mind.’
‘You call me Tess. Just because I’m big-hearted enough to fetch your groceries from Tesco’s sometimes. Why shouldn’t I call you Jan? What’s sauce for the goose.’
‘Jan’s a girl’s name.’
‘It’s both, as a matter of fact. It means John in some languages. But when I use it it means a junior Janus who looks both ways at once and can’t make up his mind which way to go because he doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going.’
There was a roaring cheer from the pub.
‘Sounds like a winner,’ Tess said.
‘I suppose that means we’ll be graced with the presence of the adorable Adam again just when we’re having such a deliriously cosy chat.’
Another prolonged roar.
Tess said, ‘You know it can only be friends between us? I mean, I like you a lot. But in the sort of way sex would spoil somehow.’
‘Spoil!’
‘Honest . . . Janus!’
‘D’you have to call me that?’
‘Yes, let me, go on, I like it!’ She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
I was supposed to smile. ‘All right, have it your own way.’
‘Good. I win.’
‘Was it a competition?’
Another, more drunken roar.
‘There’s a lot of it about.’
Followed by screams and shouts and then a sudden silence.
‘Almighty Mammon, make me rich!
Make me rich quickly, with never a hitch
in my fine prosperity! Kick all those in the ditch
who hinder me, Mammon, great son of a bitch!’
‘One of yours?’
‘D.H. Lawrence.’
‘How do you do it?’
‘What?’
‘Remember all that stuff.’
‘Don’t know. Always have. A gift, I suppose.’
‘What teachers call clever, you mean.’
‘Having a good memory?’
‘For facts and figures and quotations and stuff like that. Not for people. Not for things that matter. No wonder they put you a year ahead. But get back to money.’
‘Doesn’t everything always.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with filthy lucre. Depends how you use it.’
‘And how you get it maybe? Just think – they were like us once, that lot in there. Ordinary, normal, sane, poverty-stricken schoolkids.’
‘Is that how you feel, like an et cetera schoolkid?’
‘Yes and no. Yes up to the last few weeks, and no, not since The Glums started to clear. Don’t know what I feel, to be honest, except empty. Haven’t a clue what I want, either. Not whatever is supposed to come next though. Grown up or adult or whatever. Do you?’
She was feeding snips from her sandwiches to a family of mallards cadging on the water at our feet, who gobbled, cackled, and paddled off, as if they knew there was nothing more to be had from us.
‘Don’t think about it too much.’
‘You’re all now, you! Do you want to be, though? Adult and all that.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Not if it means being lumbered with some endless job and a family and a mortgage and a house to do odd jobs on every weekend or any of that sort of garbage.’
‘All that responsibility is what you mean.’
‘Yes, OK, all that responsibility. I don’t want it, thanks. But I don’t want to go on being a schoolkid, either. Had enough of that.’
‘Stuck in limboland, then, aren’t you? Don’t know whether you’re coming or going. Like I said – facing both ways again.’
The barman who’d served us came across the grass with the forced nonchalance of someone on an urgent mission who at the same time is trying not to frighten the paying customers and, crouching down between us, said, ‘Weren’t you with the young guy in the grotty blue sweater?’
We nodded, sensing trouble.
‘Well, he’s stirred up a bit of aggro in the bar.’
‘What’s happened?’ Tess asked.
‘Wanted to have a go with the yard-of-ale but the others wouldn’t let him – they were having a competition, you see. Your friend insisted, and there was a bit of a row. Someone grabbed the yard, but it broke and, well – your friend cut himself. There’s blood spilt and beer and not a happy reaction from the others. Could you come and help sort him out?’
‘The idiot,’ I said.
‘Come on,’ Tess said. ‘We can’t just leave him.’
‘Yes, we can. We’re not responsible.’
‘We brought him.’
‘So? We don’t have to take him back, do we? He’s a sponger. He’ll just upset everything. Let him take care of himself.’
But I followed her into the pub.
6
Inside there is the kind of unnatural quiet with dark mutterings, and resentful glances, and one or two people determinedly ignoring what’s going on that you only get in the aftermath of an unpleasant scene in a public place where people are supposed to be enjoying themselves.
The yuppies and undergrads have separated to either side of the disaster area, their undisguised belligerence directed at Adam, who is slumped in a chair in the middle of the deserted arena, wild-eyed and sullen. A brisk middle-aged woman, whom I take to be the landlady, is bandaging his left hand while a young barmaid mops the floor round their feet.
Tess and I edge our way through the throng, me trying to pretend we’re nothing to do with this and are invisible anyhow, and take up stations on either side of the wounded public enemy.
‘You all right?’ Tess mutters.
‘Yeah, I’m OK,’ he says and suddenly turns on that surprising vulpine grin. It’s as though he’s a character in a play whose reactions are remotely controlled by a mischievous dramatist.
‘Look,’ says the landlady, ‘it would be a good idea if you got him out of here.’
‘Haven’t had my go yet,’ Adam says and stares nuke-eyed at the yard boys.
Tess says, ‘We’ll take you home.’
‘Home?’ I mutter.
‘Shut up and help,’ she mutters back, and, taking Adam by his good arm, says firmly, ‘Come on, we’re leaving.’
Irresistible Tess. Adam allows her to lead him away without another word, me following, a reluctant rearguard.
7
How easily circumstances change people, their moods, their feelings, their attitudes to themselves and the world around them. An hour earlier as we rowed upriver, relaxed, happy in the sun, I’d felt part of the landscape – at one with the world. Now, everything is reversed, Adam broodily nursing his hand, sitting where I had sat, in the stem cosied up to Tess, me tense as I row us downstream, sweating in what now seems an unfriendly sun, and feeling awkward, like an alien.
For a while I take out my simmering anger on the river, sculling through the water with as much force as I can. But soon my strength weakens; then only words will do.
I say, glaring at Adam, ‘You’re a pain in the arse, you know that, don’t you!’
He refuses to look, his head turned away.
‘Leave him alone,’ Tess says. ‘I’d have thought you’d be on his side, not on theirs.’
‘I’m not on their side and I’m not on his, I’m on my own.’
‘Selfish prig! You don’t deserve any friends.’
‘He’s nothing but trouble.’
‘And you’re a jerk.’
‘Oh, get stuffed!’
8
For the rest of the trip we all have lockjaw. At the bridge Tess coddles Adam into the house while I remain sitting in the boat tethered to the bank and sulk.
Quarter of an hour later Tess came out.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Didn’t mean it.’
I won’t speak.
‘Are you really going to turn him out?’
Glowering silence.
‘Seems to me people are always turning him out of somewhere. Can’t he stay the night?’
‘No.’
I felt a heel, which is exactly what she wanted me to feel.
‘He’s gone very quiet. I think he’s a bit shocked. I’ve given him some sweet tea and made him lie down.’
‘It’s all an act. There’s nothing the matter, really. He made a fool of himself and cut his hand, that’s all.’ I felt invaded, taken over. And jealous of all this pampering.
Tess said, ‘Let him stay, just for tonight.’
‘No.’
‘Listen, I’ll make us a meal. Mum’ll give us some extra stuff. I’ll say you’ve got a guest, unexpected. Which is true anyway. And I’ll cadge some cans of lager off Dad. We’ll have a nice time. It’ll be a party. A house warming! You haven’t had one yet. How about it? You’ll enjoy it, honest . . . Come on, let yourself go for once, it won’t hurt!’
Never able to resist Tess when she’s determined, then or now, I gave in. ‘All right,’ I said, feigning unwilling agreement, the art of the spoilt boy (he who’d sworn he’d never pretend any more). I was on a loser, I knew. And that desire in me to be liked took over, a failing I hate but have never quite been able to shake off. ‘But no passes at him while I’m around.’
‘Cheek! I’ll treat you both the same.’
‘Great, a threesome. Now that could be fun.’
‘You’ve got sex on the brain.’
‘Not to mention other parts, and who hasn’t?’ I was brightening up again. Another of the virtues of Tess – something about her that dispels The Glums. One of life’s natural healers, just as some people are natural destroyers.
Depression, of which a gloomy mood is a miniature version, is like being filled with iron filings all zinging about inside you, going every which way, pricking and stinging. And Tess is like the magnet that magics all the filings into a beautiful pattern, a force field, in which they act as one, harmoniously.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said, ‘while Prince Charming lies on my bed of his pain, let’s you and me go blackberrying. Then we’ll make a pud.’
‘It’s after Michaelmas.’
‘Ignorant yob. September twenty ninth. It’s well known in these here parts that you shouldn’t eat blackberries after Michaelmas because the Devil pees on them that night.’
‘You’re full of odd info today. Roman gods. Urinating devils.’
‘I get it from Dad. He loves that sort of thing – country customs, folklore.’
‘I’ll chance it if you will. We can sweeten them with honey.’
We found a plastic bag and set off, Tess knowing the best bushes in the hedges between the bridge and the village. Blackberries big as the balls of my thumb. Not really. Long past their best, but we weren’t to be put off. Doing together was what mattered.
As we picked, our fingers soon violet-red from juice and itchy-smarting from the pin-sharp thorns, Tess said, ‘Why do you go on so much about responsibility?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Mon dieu, you should hear yourself.’
‘I don’t like people expecting things of me.’
‘Do they?’
‘Parents. Teachers. Relatives. Don’t yours?’
‘Never bother to think about it. Wouldn’t pay much attention anyway.’
‘You’re more easy-going than me. You just accept things. I envy that.’
‘You are a bit heavy, that’s for sure. I thought it was The Glums.’
‘No, I was born that way. In most of the photos of me as a kid I’m frowning, like I’m worried to death.’
We stood back from the bushes and looked at each other. A new understanding.
‘Mum calls you old-fashioned. I suppose that’s what she means.’
‘What?’
‘That you take such a serious view of life.’
‘Does it matter? To you, I mean.’
‘It’s how you are. I like you as you are.’
‘Stodgy? Prematurely middle-aged?’
‘I didn’t say that! You do have your lighter side. Now and then!’
‘Which is what you like.’
‘If you really must know, Jan dear . . .’
‘God, not that again!’
‘. . . what I like most about you is your mind.’
‘Not my lovely body?’
‘No, not your lovely body. You make me think in a way nobody else has. I enjoy that, surprise surprise. And,’ she added quickly, ‘don’t say another word about it now because you’ll only go and spoil things by saying too much.’
‘Can you?’
‘Sacré bleu!’ she said, but she was laughing. ‘Haven’t you learned nothing yet!’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Oh – I dunno – how can anybody who’s read so much be so – naïve!’
There was a sharpening of the air as the autumn sun went down. Our breath steamed. Tess’s lips were purple. We started picking berries again.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘if we’re going to live off the land instead of out of your mum’s freezer, what about us making cauliflower cheese for a main course? We can pinch a cauliflower out of your garden, there’s about fifty more than your family will ever eat. I’ve plenty of cheese and milk. You just brought some butter. We’ll have to cadge some flour though, I haven’t any of that.’
‘Haven’t cooked it before.’
‘I have. I’ll show you. What you do is wash the cauliflower and divide it into florets. Cook in salted boiling water for ten minutes. Make a sauce by melting an ounce of butter in a pan. Blend in a couple of tablespoons of flour. Cook for about a minute, stirring all the time because it bums easily.’
‘Do I want to know all this?’
‘Take off the heat. Slowly stir in half a pint of milk. Put on the heat again. Keep stirring. Bring to the boil. Add about three ounces of cheese, and salt and pepper to taste. Put the cauliflower into a casserole dish, pour on the sauce, sprinkle a couple of ounces of grated cheese on top, put the casserole into the oven and bake for fifteen to twenty minutes. Olay! Bon appétit, et cetera.’
‘Lawks a-mercy, mon ami, hidden talents! Where’d you learn that?’
‘Haven’t wasted all my time the last few weeks. What else do we housebound men have to do all day but learn to cook?’
‘You’ve such a hard life. How about some spuds?’
‘We’ll bake them in the fire.’
‘Great!’
On our way back from the garden, where we’d endured much teasing from the Norris tribe (father, mother, two sons, plus Tess, the youngest), Tess said, ‘Don’t you think this is a lovely chuckle? And we wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for Adam.’
‘Careful. Proof of the pud. Might turn out like Christmas.’
‘How?’
‘Better in the anticipation than the event.’
‘Pessimist.’
‘Romantic.’
‘Cynic.’
‘Estragonist.’
‘Eh?’
‘Sewer-rat, curate, cretin, crrritic.’
‘What are you on about now?’
‘Samuel Beckett . . . Waiting for Godot . . . the play?’
‘I make a point of never knowing anything other people quote at me. It lets them feel superior.’
‘Touché! Will you have it in a basket or on a plate?’
‘This is all too heady for me.’
‘Must be the Devil’s pee on those blackberries you ate. I expect his piddle is pretty intoxicating.’
‘Intoxicating perhaps, pretty not. Glad you’re feeling perky again.’
9
When we arrived back at the house Adam had gone. Again. Along with some food – all my bread, a bag of fruit Tess had brought that day, and half the cake my mother had sent in her weekly parcel.
‘This is getting to be a habit,’ I said.
‘I suppose you’re pleased,’ Tess said, not hiding her disappointment.
‘Yes,’ I said to irritate her. ‘But he’ll be back. He knows when he’s on to a good thing.’
Not until later, when we took our blackberry pud out into the night frost to eat by the river, did we discover that the boat had gone as well.