YOU’D HAVE THOUGHT that after Sandy Beach’s disastrous weekend with the Hardts nobody would be in much of a hurry to repeat the experience. But just the opposite happened. Incredible though it may be, he became a frequent visitor to the Hardts’ shore house.
The prime mover in this was William’s father who was, as we know, a kindly man. Joe Hardt hadn’t been involved all his life in civil rights cases against major American companies and the US government without getting to know a real prick when he saw one; he had no illusions about Sandy Beach. But his son needed a friend and if Sandy Beach was that boy then Joe would do everything in his power to facilitate the friendship. In this his wife concurred. Such was her sense of guilt at having reared a boy who had difficulty in forming social relationships she was desperate for one pal, any pal, to assuage it.
That’s all very well, you might say, but then why didn’t William just come clean and tell them he couldn’t stand the little shit? Why did he let them go on thinking he actually liked him and so condemn himself to countless extra hours in Sandy Beach’s company, besides those he already had to endure at school?
The reason was that William could see the pleasure it gave his old man to do something for his son, especially something that involved so much suffering for Joe himself; he was making a sacrifice to help his son, he was putting up with Sandy Beach! It would have broken William’s heart to disappoint his father. He already felt he’d let his father down by being such a geeky, unpopular child. The least he could do was put up with Sandy Beach for his father so that his father could put up with Sandy Beach for him.
If the weekends and – misery! – whole vacation weeks Sandy Beach spent with the Hardts were something to be got through, and they were, especially with Ruth’s constant sniping at the visitor on account of the fact that his physical appearance coincided almost exactly with her idea of what a prodigious masturbator would look like, then the reciprocal visits William had to make to the Beaches were worse.
They lived in a small town upstate. The first visit, Sandy Beach’s father met them at the railroad station and, in the back of the car on the way to the house, Beach whispered to William, ‘There’s uh something I forgot to mention. You might find our house a little um messy. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we like it. We find it kind of relaxed and comfortable, but I guess you might say it’s not exactly to everybody’s taste.’
Now William’s mother was exceptionally tidy. And she did have something of a thing about germs. These twin aspects of her personality would, in later years, cause William to speculate whether therein might lie the origins – either environmental or genetic – of his OCD and of Ruth’s phobia about spermatozoa. But even allowing for that, even if that hadn’t been the case and his home had been as sloppy and germ-ridden as the next person’s, he would still have almost flatlined from the shock of stepping into Sandy Beach’s.
William knew the Beaches were not rich, certainly not by the standards of most of the families who had kids at his expensive school. William’s own parents were far from wealthy, because Joe had elected to put helping poor black people above making a buck, and the school was only possible because a rich relative on his mother’s side had left money for the express purpose of sending William there.
But the Beaches were known to be really poor. Sandy Beach always wore uniform from the school thrift shop, usually stuff that was the cheapest because it was so worn out that no-one else would let their children be seen in it. On top of that his mother made sure he got his wear out of it, by buying it when it was two sizes too big and making Sandy wear it until it was two sizes too small. So his clothes were almost always either too big or too small for him. There was only ever a comparatively brief period during the transition from one to the other when they were just right, and then it didn’t usually happen that they were all just right at the same time; he might have pants that fitted perfectly, but you didn’t really notice that because they were concealed by the blazer that came down to his knees.
And his parents couldn’t afford to pay for a decent orthodontist, so that, to add to his other problems, Sandy Beach had crooked teeth. The Beaches had no spare money to put into improving Sandy’s appearance, a project that, let’s face it, could have proved a bottomless money pit. They had scrimped and saved every last dime to pay for Sandy’s education. He had so many disadvantages that they realized he had to have at least one plus to get him launched in life and education was going to be it.
Joe Hardt had a different take on it. ‘Well, you would scrimp and save if you were them,’ he remarked to his wife when she told him all this. ‘Anything to get that kid into a boarding school and away from home. Jesus, I’d rob banks if he was my kid.’
‘I can’t imagine you robbing a bank,’ said Mrs Hardt with a smile. ‘You wouldn’t take the risk.’
‘There wouldn’t be any risk,’ said Joe. ‘It would be a no-lose situation. You get clear with the money, he goes to boarding school; you get caught you go to jail and only have to see him on visitors’ day. Why wouldn’t you rob banks?’
Mr Beach parked his beaten-up old Ford in the drive at the side of the house and they went in through the back door where they found Mrs Beach at work in the kitchen.
At least William thought it was the kitchen. It wasn’t that easy to tell for sure. Whatever the room’s original purpose, it was now given over to the keeping of stuff. Every surface, every counter, every chair, the table – if that’s what was under the central pile – was covered with stuff: piles of old newspapers and magazines, boxes of household equipment, like a cardboard crate of furniture polish concealing itself under a layer of dust, tins of food, packets of dried soup, and a tool box that was probably empty in that various tools – a hammer, a chisel, a set of screwdrivers – lay around in different locations in the room, and that was now paying for its keep as the supporter of a laundry basket loaded with dirty washing.
There were two washing machines, one of them disconnected and in the centre of the room, both piled high with boxes of light bulbs, packets of firelighters, plastic toddlers’ toys (although Sandy was an only child, his parents having wisely stopped after having him. ‘They probably became celibate after him,’ Joe Hardt told his wife. ‘Would you trust any form of birth control if there was the remotest statistical possibility of another kid like that?’), unwashed dishes, washed dishes, rusting saucepans, cardboard boxes full of empty supermarket plastic bags with half-eaten bowls of cat food perched precariously on the very top.
The drainer by the sink was similarly afflicted with several stacks of books supporting an old TV with a cracked screen. Even the windowsill was occupied by dirty coffee cups and a few browned apple cores.
‘Why, hello William,’ said Sandy Beach’s mother. She was a large woman with wild hair that stuck out from her head as though she’d just had an electric shock, which was more than possible, given the disarray that surrounded her. ‘You’ll have to take us as you find us, I’m afraid.’ With a sweep of her hands she alluded to the chaos all around. ‘I didn’t have time to tidy up today.’
She turned and William saw she was cooking food on something he hadn’t realized was a stove. Only one hot plate was in use, the one on which she had a skillet in which she was pushing something around. The other three were concealed beneath various piles of clutter. ‘If you’ll just excuse me a moment, supper’s almost ready,’ she said. ‘Take a seat.’
William stood and helplessly surveyed the room. He was trying to work out which of the piles of stuff might have as its foundation a chair.
‘Here, let me help,’ said Mr Beach, coming through the back door with William’s case. He went to set it down, but there wasn’t a bit of floor space to put it on, save for the narrow corridor that led from the back door to the rest of the house between the wavering cliffs of rubbish. Having realized this, Mr Beach opened the back door and set the case down on the porch. ‘We’ll get that later,’ he said. ‘Here, hold your arms out.’
William did as requested and Mr Beach began demolishing one of the towers. Onto William’s outstretched arms he placed a plastic carton of shredded paper labelled ‘Hamster bedding’, a few dozen magazines, a case of beer (‘Ah, so that’s where that got to,’ said Mr Beach enthusiastically. ‘I just knew I hadn’t drunk it all!’), a can of fly spray and a pile of towels that looked clean, but might well not have been.
Clean was rapidly becoming a relative word here to William. Indeed he was not too worried about the possible effects of germs, which, even if fatal, would probably entail a slow kind of death. He was thinking that this was exactly the kind of low-life dysfunctional household that real-crime TV shows revealed to be a breeding ground not just for bacteria, but for serial killers too. The Beaches could have had any number of murdered children concealed about the place and nobody would ever have been able to find them.
Mrs Beach was a large woman. Actually she was morbidly obese, even fatter than a woman whose photograph would later cause William so much trouble, but he wasn’t even aware of the term back then. You didn’t see so many super-fat people in those days.
Anyhow, eventually Mr Beach excavated a chair. ‘Take a seat,’ he repeated, indicating it with a bold sweep of his hand that seemed to reveal no small amount of pride in having proved himself to be the owner of one.
Then he saw that the oscillating pile of stuff William was holding wouldn’t permit him to move, let alone sit down. ‘We’ll just, uh, get rid of this,’ he said and began removing things from William’s pile and redistributing them between the various piles around the room. He was only a little guy and had to stretch to place a towel or a can of beans on the tottering towers. It was like watching a circus act. You kept waiting for the object that would be the last straw and bring a tower down. There was even the possibility of a domino effect and the whole kitchen disappearing for ever under stuff.
Eventually William sat down and Mr Beach repeated the whole exercise so that Sandy could sit beside him. ‘Supper’s ready!’ announced Mrs Beach. She looked around at the various towers until she spotted a couple of dinner plates halfway down one. Slowly and with surprising delicacy for such a large woman, she slid them out, one by one, without disturbing the rest of the pile, although it was hearts in mouths for a moment or two while the whole thing swayed threateningly.
She had to move sideways through the stacks of stuff because the gangway was too narrow to take her full on. Mr Beach followed her, like one of those little cleaner fish that hang out with whales, steadying wobbling stacks that she had brushed against. Having placed the plates on the table she returned to the stove and came back with the skillet and turned its contents onto them.
William gazed at the congealing, greasy mess before him. It was impossible to identify it. There was something yellow in there that he hoped was egg because he didn’t even want to think about what it might be if it wasn’t. There was something black and cylindrical that he prayed was a charred sausage. Other bits and pieces defied analysis.
‘Don’t wait for us!’ said Mrs Beach. ‘We’ll eat later.’
‘Yes, we’ll have two sittings,’ said Mr Beach. ‘Kids first, adults after.’
Indeed, looking around the room, it would have been impossible for them to do anything else. Even one sitting had been a major achievement. But in spite of everything, William couldn’t help feeling sorry for Mr Beach. The way he said ‘kids’ with such enthusiasm. You couldn’t help knowing that it was the first time he’d been able to use the word in the plural in this house. His happiness made William feel uncommonly sad. He knew then he wouldn’t have the heart to refuse to come back to this awful place. There was nothing for it; he was going to have to spend a big part of his childhood here.
He began pushing his food around his plate, reasoning that as soon as the Beaches turned their backs it would be pretty easy to conceal the meal around the room. Nobody was going to notice it wherever he put it.
But Mrs Beach was watching him like a hawk. ‘Come on now, William,’ she said, ‘even if you aren’t especially hungry, at least eat your vegetables.’
Afterwards William was given a tour of the house by Mr Beach. In some places the alleys between stacks of stuff were so narrow that William thought they must be no-go areas for Sandy’s mom. At one point Mr Beach proudly pointed out a glass extension to the side of the property. ‘The sun room wasn’t here when we bought the place,’ he explained. ‘We had it put on. I don’t know how we managed without it. It’s very useful for storing more stuff.’
Now William was not given to any great psychological insights and he was only eleven years old. But his own mental disorder made him empathetic to the psychological problems of others and he had a sense that all the rubbish hoarded in the house was a manifestation of the Beaches’ depression (he could imagine his dad saying to his mom, ‘Well, heck, I’d be depressed if I had a kid like that!’) and he started to feel sorry for Sandy. This didn’t mean he liked him any more. Quite the reverse. The more contact he had with the little prick, the more he despised him. But it helped him be a bit kinder to the kid. You had to pity someone who lived in a house that was so cramped there wasn’t even elbow room to have a decent wank.