There was no smoke in the orchard and no fire in Angel Head to make it. White grass and a single daffodil grew through the floor. The only smoke around here was coming out of the vicarage chimney and the sight of it pissed Thomas off. The last thing he wanted was to go in there and run into Vicar Potts. But he wanted to see Maurice, and with no way around it, he walked back through the holly and graves and knocked lightly on the front door.
No response and he knocked again and this time, to Thomas’s surprise, it was opened by a short black man with a crucifix slung round his neck. He had a bulging head, similar eyes, and a nose as wide as a knee. His religious credentials were further enhanced by an oversized kaftan secured at the waist with a brown leather belt.
‘Oh,’ said Thomas, sort of taken aback to see a chap such as this at the door.
‘What is it?’ said the black man.
‘I’ve come to see Maurice.’
‘He’s ill.’
‘Is he?’
‘Mumpos.’
‘What?’
‘Mumpos,’ and he pushed his face at Thomas as though this were some kind of secret. The accent was dense and muddy and Thomas didn’t know what he was talking about until it suddenly clicked.
‘Mumps?’ he said, and this got a nod. Thomas asked if Mrs Potts was at home.
‘With the butcherer,’ said the black one. ‘They will both be back in half of an hour.’
And he looked at Thomas suspiciously, and looked like he was going to close the door.
‘Is Maurice upstairs?’
This was the case.
‘He is expecting me,’ said Thomas. ‘Maybe I could just go up and see him for a minute.’
Permission was neither given nor denied, so Thomas walked in anyway and the dodgy eyes followed him up carpetless stairs. At the top, he pushed into an attic room full of shadows and ceilings. The curtains were partially drawn and Maurice half asleep on the bed. On the wall above him there was a wooden cross with the Christ missing. One or two model aeroplanes dangled on strings, and there was a table lamp made out of a dimple bottle. A selection of medications was distributed around it. But apart from a bow-fronted wardrobe, possibly French and of very poor quality, there was little else in the room to speak of except some crap books in a homemade bookcase and an Edwardian dining chair …
Thomas valued it at about five bob, pulled it up to the bedside, and sat looking at Maurice. His whole head seemed inflated, everything ill from his neck to his ears. His eyes were so swollen, Thomas didn’t realise they had opened.
‘Hello, Cherry Pup,’ he grinned (categorically demonstrating he had read Gwendolin’s letter), but he looked too lousy to be called on it so Thomas let it pass.
‘What’s the matter with you then?’
‘Got mumps, haven’t I?’ said Maurice, struggling himself up into a position of relative comfort. ‘How long have you been in here?’
‘Just got here.’
‘You wanna open the curtains, don’t ya?’
Thomas got up and opened them and returned to the chair. ‘Who’s that geezer in the hall?’ he said.
‘What geezer?’
‘Religious geezer?’
‘The Tan?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Christopher Jumo. He’s a bishop’s assistant.’
‘Is he from the Tropics?’
‘Well, he ain’t from Redditch, is he?’ said Maurice. ‘World Council A-Churches, cunt’s here for a fortnight. I wouldn’t mind that, ’cept he’s up here every day, and I can’t understand a fucking word he says.’
‘It’s all that stuff you stick in your ears.’
‘No it ain’t, it’s glands. Every gland I got is swollen. Doctor reckons I’ll be in here a week.’
‘A week in bed?’
‘Yeah, fucking boring it is too. My sperm count’s probably well down.’
‘What does he come up here for?’
‘Who, Jumo?’
‘Yeah.’
‘To talk to me about blind people, all I fucking need.’ He sniffed contemptuously and put a different thought together. ‘What would you rather be, blind, or black?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘It’s a question, innit? Would you rather be blind, or black?’
‘I dunno,’ said Thomas. ‘I haven’t thought about it really.’
‘Fuckin’ blind any day,’ said Maurice. ‘Except of course, if you were blind, you wouldn’t know you were black.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Thomas.
Maurice yawned and rubbed at his eyes, discovered something in one and swallowed it.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’m pleased to see you. I been going barmy up here for a fag.’
There was a pause before Thomas said, ‘I haven’t got any.’
There was another pause before Maurice said, ‘Why not?’
‘I’ve given up.’
‘Given up? Why?’
He instinctively realised why, and naming no names, an appreciation of the absurdity grew across his face like a bad taste.
‘You don’t wanna get too involved,’ he said. ‘You don’t wanna get gooey with a girl, coz they got fucking big thumbs.’ He held one up, then drilled it into the sheet. ‘She’ll have you under it, mate.’
‘It’s not coz of Gwen, it’s coz of health.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Maurice, and he pointed at the wardrobe, said his pipe and dog-ends were in there and wanted them out. Thomas found the tobacco tin in a pocket and the pipe in a shoe box.
‘There’s a bottle of sherry in there,’ said Maurice. ‘And two miniatures.’
‘Miniature what?’
‘Gins.’
Both in a Wellington boot. Everything came back to the bed and Maurice drank one of the little Beef Eaters virtually in one.
‘Where did you get ’em?’ said Thomas.
‘Cabinet. You want one?’
He didn’t and went back to the window and looked out. Mrs Potts crossed the gardens with two dead rabbits. Maurice loaded his briar and lit up. When Thomas turned back to him he was shaking his head, a string of smoke coming out of his ear like a candelabra that had just been blown out.
‘You don’t wanna let it hang around on you,’ he said.
‘What?’ said Thomas.
‘Love,’ he exhaled. ‘Being in love with a girl.’
Thomas suddenly felt very happy. His whole body felt happy. Fuck the cigarettes, he was in love. He was in love with the prettiest girl in Broadstairs, and he was seeing her again tomorrow.
‘Listen,’ he said, returning to the bed, ‘I’m sorry you’re not feeling too pucker, but I’m just here to collect the pictures, then I gotta go.’
‘Not so easy, white man,’ said Maurice.
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’re under the bed, and I can’t get out of it.’
‘What do you mean, not for a minute?’
‘I can’t, I can’t stand up.’
‘How do you get to the lavatory then?’
‘I have assistance,’ he said. ‘If I get out of this bed, I’m on the floor.’
Whether Maurice’s enfeeblement was real or imagined, it wasn’t a sufficient deterrent to Thomas and he gave the mattress a couple of exploratory prods.
‘Which end are they?’ he said.
‘Sort of in the middle,’ said Maurice, pointing with the stem of his pipe.
‘All right,’ said Thomas. ‘If I lift, you can hang on, OK?’
‘What?’
‘I’ll just haul you up, grab the envelope, and lower you down again. You don’t even have to get out.’
The bed was an ugly Victorian business with the mattress inside, like a bed in a box.
‘You can’t lift this.’
‘Course I can,’ said Thomas. ‘Not a problem,’ and indeed it was true. For his age his arms were particularly well developed, courtesy of the newspaper trade.
‘You won’t lift it.’
‘I fucking will.’
‘Anyway, what’s the hurry?’ said Maurice. ‘They’re safe under there.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t know,’ said Thomas. ‘I’m worried about my grandfather. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I don’t like leaving them lying around, that’s all.’
Maurice puffed reflectively at his pipe and seemed to understand. And then he said, ‘What’s happening with the other stuff?’
Thomas shook his head, confessed he hadn’t really been looking. Maurice tugged the cork out of his Madeira bottle and wanted to know why.
‘Because I can’t. I can’t get in. He’s too ill.’
‘Big error,’ said Maurice. ‘If it goes bad for him, you’ll lose the lot, and that ain’t doing him a favour, is it?’
He filled a medicine glass with his yellow booze and Thomas accepted it.
‘It’s a lifetime’s collection, right?’ continued Maurice. ‘All brilliant stuff? And you don’t wanna let that go too easy.’
‘There’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘A statement you will live to regret,’ said Maurice, plundering another swig from the bottle. ‘You’ll find in the long term you’ll regret that, because if your mother gets hold of it, or even worse, your old man, that’ll be that, won’t it? They’re not gonna hang on to it for you till you’re “old enough”, are they?’
‘My old man might not be around.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Probably getting a divorce.’
‘Ay?’ said Maurice. ‘A divorce?’
As an inducement to more info he unscrewed the cap of his remaining miniature and added it to Thomas’s sherry.
‘Here, have a gin in it?’
Thomas swallowed a mouthful and gave a brief but comprehensive précis of the domestic crisis, including a somewhat embellished description of the events at Rob’s bedroom window.
‘Fuckin’ Ada. Where is he now, then?’ said Maurice.
‘Back up there,’ said Thomas. ‘As soon as she’d finished throwing everything out, we collected it up, and took it all back upstairs again.’
‘Did he thump her?’
‘Nahh,’ said Thomas. ‘If he punches anyone, it’s gonna be me. I tell you, he’s walking around in a bad mood. I’m gonna need to get a fucking key for my bedroom door.’
Maurice knocked out his pipe on the leg of the bedside table, the solid taps underlining his conviction.
‘There’s only one key you wanna worry about, and you wanna worry about it quick. You have to try and think of it from your grandfather’s point of view, hundreds of quims, right? Don’t you think he’s worried about it? After all, he’d rather you had it than they did, wouldn’t he?’
‘Maybe?’
‘I’m fuckin’ certain,’ said Maurice. ‘It’s a lifetime’s collection, right?’
‘Yeah, you already said that.’
‘Something you could never get again, not for love, not for money. You owe it to your grandad, and that’s how you gotta think of it. If I were in your shoes, I would do everything I possibly could to protect that pornography, even to the point of asking him for the fucking key, and telling him why I wanted it.’
There was silence while Thomas considered his china’s discourse. They both had another drink and looked at each other and started laughing. Why were they laughing? They didn’t know. It was the booze, it was the quims, it was funny …
‘I want those ducks,’ said Thomas.
‘You’ll have to come back.’
‘No, I won’t. You just told me to protect them. I want them now.’
‘Protect the quims, I said,’ he said.
‘It’s up her quim.’
‘No, it ain’t,’ said Maurice. ‘It’s up her arse.’
And for reasons best known to himself he exploded, crying with laughter: rolling around fighting for air and complaining of pain in the glands. Thomas hung over him, a similarly weeping head, laughing louder with every new lamentation.
‘Hurts. Hurts,’ gasped Maurice.
This protestation attracted an attack of hysterics, immobilising Maurice, who lay there weak and suffering it. He laughed till his tongue stuck out, and when he fought for an exit, Thomas was there filling it, roaring and insane, bearing down with fists either side of him for support. And they both laughed in each other’s faces till agony in the gut muscles felt like it does when there’s nothing left to spew.
‘No more. No more.’
Maurice finally got his face out of the way and hung it over the edge to escape. Why were they laughing? They still didn’t know. But it was probably the reason they were friends …
‘All right,’ said Maurice. ‘I’ll hang on to the side, and you can lift it up.’
‘I’m arseholed,’ heaved Thomas. ‘I feel arseholed.’
‘Come on,’ said Maurice. ‘I’m hanging on, lift it.’
Debilitated by tears, Thomas stuck hands down the side of the mattress and gave it a kind of preliminary weighing. It was heavy, and he said so.
‘Go for it in one,’ said Maurice.
All right, he’d have a go, and he got hold of it and hauled it up, and halfway there he started laughing again. On this occasion the stimulus was apparent. He was laughing because all the covers shot off and he could see Maurice’s foot down the other end like a hook.
‘Come on,’ said Maurice. ‘For Christ’s sake.’ His chin and eyes came over the bedding looking swollen and alarmed. ‘Hurry up.’
Cackling with laughter, Thomas fought to gather strength, then in a single and enormous effort, suddenly wrenched the mattress upright. Simultaneously the door opened and Susan Potts made an entry with a dead rabbit. Although it all happened rather quickly, she was there with ample time to see Thomas wilfully toss her sick son out of bed. Maurice flew off into the sunlight, and as he vanished, Thomas barked with laughter.
There was the proverbial dull thud followed by a religious expletive from the floor.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ demanded Mrs Potts.
Thomas swung round, and the shock of her, plus the murdered rabbit, tended to sterilise his merriment.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘You just threw him out of the bed.’
‘Not really,’ said Thomas.
‘Don’t contradict me, you ridiculous boy, I stood here and watched you do it.’ And it was unarguable: from her perspective, this is precisely what had happened.
‘Help,’ said Maurice.
‘Put that mattress down at once,’ she ordered, and thank God for that, because apart from the ducks there was a good clutch of moral-soiling magazines underneath. Thomas dropped the mattress and she thrust the rabbit at him, marching around the bed to get Maurice back into it.
‘I’m astonished at you, Thomas.’
Thomas was in a nasty spot, and stood on it while Mother Potts hauled her son off the boards and packed him back into bed. There was a lot of pillow adjustment and feeling of the forehead. Maurice let her indulge it, flopping around like a twot. It was undeniable he looked awful, but unquestionable that this was caused by laughter more than anything else.
She was on the pulse now and looking at a watch. Maurice moaned and she oozed placations, had a look at his tongue that he shoved out willingly, and satisfying herself and finally him that no injury was discernible, she returned attention to Thomas.
Her face seemed larger than ever, like it had too many ingredients, and her eyes were full of anger and blame. Thomas looked back at her, holding the rabbit by its ears, and felt something move in his jaw that he hoped might resemble a smile.
‘It was an error,’ he said.
She wasn’t interested. She was aware of the smoke.
‘And I do think it dreadful you smoking in here.’
He shook his head, but what was the point. He protested nothing and neither did Maurice, the bastard, not a squeak in Thomas’s defence. And far be it for Mum Potts to consider that the briar might belong to the second heaviest smoker in Thanet.
‘If you don’t know how to behave yourself,’ she said, ‘I’d rather you didn’t visit again. Mumps is not a joke, you know.’
‘I know,’ said Thomas. ‘I’ve had it.’
‘Did someone come round and throw you out of bed?’
‘Not that I remember,’ he said.
‘I’m astonished,’ said Susan Potts.
That she might be but there was worse to come. Thomas saw it first, and then Maurice, and then everyone was looking at the bottle at the same time. This time, Maurice got up a feeble whisper. ‘Don’t forget your sherry,’ he said.
And went back into relapse.
You cunt, thought Thomas. You utter treacherous cunt.
Susan grabbed the flagon and handed it on. Thomas was suddenly in possession of a Madeira bottle in his left hand and a dead rabbit in his right with instructions to get out the door.
Out of it he went and stood on the landing looking at the rabbit. He held it out in front of him, dangling by the ears. It was brown and big as a dog and he wondered why she carried them around the house.
After a minute or two she came out, closed the door with quiet precision and seemed to have calmed-off somewhat. Thomas’s thoughts were a mess, struggling to work out the mechanics of viable apology.
‘It was an error of judgement,’ he said.
‘We won’t say any more about it,’ hushed Mrs Potts. ‘Maurice is sleeping now.’
She was already on her way down, Thomas descending a stair or two behind and every one of them a contribution to his ambition to get out of the front door. At the first-floor landing there was a framed photograph of Potts and a tall pygmy on the wall, and further opportunity for exchange.
‘Excuse me, Mrs Potts.’
‘Yes?’
‘I wondered if you’d like your rabbit back?’
He held it up like an angler. She looked first at it, and then at him.
‘The rabbit is for you,’ she said.
‘Is it?’
‘Christopher told me you were here, we’ve just had a kill, and I thought your mother might like it.’
He looked at her blankly, trying to look grateful.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘It’s a buck.’
‘Oh, is it?’
Why she cost it in dollars he didn’t know, but said he’d certainly pass it on. On the last flight of stairs the afternoon that couldn’t have got worse suddenly did. Potts burst through the front door under his eyebrows. On his way through he looked at Thomas and they exchanged curt acknowledgement, then at the kitchen door, Potts paused and looked back.
‘Oh Thomas,’ he said, ‘I wanted a word with you.’
Thomas didn’t want a word with him and this was everything he didn’t want to hear. Moreover, whatever this ‘word’ was, it wasn’t to be discussed in the hall, and he and his rabbit and bottle were obliged to follow the Reverend into the kitchen.
The temperature rose by about forty degrees – it was hot as hell, like the Belgian Congo. Steam condensed on the walls, pouring out of a kettle on a filthy old coal oven under a forest of saucepans and hooks. These were the table rabbit-hooks. Jumo looked across from the far end of the kitchen – he was skinning (clearly as a favour to Mrs Potts), and there were three undressed and another half-dozen still togged.
Potts whipped out a Player’s, tapped it on the pack, and gestured Thomas to a chair at the opposite end of the table.
‘You can sit down, Thomas.’
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ he said, and he kept the floor where he was.
‘I wanted a word with you,’ said Potts, fixing the cigarette to his lips. ‘Because of something Maurice has told us.’
The ‘us’ referred to Mrs Potts and he put eyes across to include her. Thomas didn’t know what Maurice had told them but already didn’t like the sound of it.
‘How is your grandfather?’
Oh, no, he thought, not the grandfather again, and he shook his head and didn’t answer.
‘I understand he’s out of hospital now?’
‘Yes, he is, but he’s still ill.’
The Vicar’s eyes and cigarette lit up concurrently. Thomas knew he was thinking religious and it dashed all hope he had of an easy out of here.
‘Is he suffering at all?’
‘Suffering?’ said Thomas.
The Reverend’s cheeks hollowed as the smoke went down, then billowed as the smoke came back, dragging a stifler.
‘Yes,’ he gasped, ‘suff-er-ing?’
‘I think the doctors have given him pills to stop the pain.’
Potts rolled the cigarette in his fingers. It was clear he wasn’t enjoying it, in fact it was clear Potts didn’t like smoking at all. They roughed him up and hurt his lungs. But because addiction demanded this procedure at least eighty times a day, necessity had forced the development of a technique. He cremated rather than smoked, ignoring pain, drawing as fast as was humanly possible. Within five drags he’d sucked the cigarette in half, leaving a super-heated prong of tobacco at its end.
‘It must be very hard,’ he wheezed, ‘for your mother?’
‘Yes, it is.’
On the ensuing drag he gagged at the sheer concentration of nicotine exploding into his throat. Nausea rummaged his face and for a moment his eyes vanished under the skull. There was something in his mouth. As his hand rose to his lips the tongue automatically presented itself like one of those old-fashioned coon-head money-boxes receiving a coin. Fragments of tobacco were removed, and the tongue then returned to the face for the cough, reappearing again as he struggled to breathe.
‘And your grandmother,’ he said. ‘Hard on her?’
‘Yes, it is.’
Mrs Potts joined in with an unspoken understanding, and at the other end of the table there was an unpleasant sound as Jumo parted a rabbit from its skin.
‘Look here,’ said Potts, ‘I’ll come to the point. Maurice has told us that your grandfather is having enemas.’
Thomas nodded in confirmation, didn’t know where this was going, didn’t see it was anything to do with them.
‘Are you sure of that?’ said the Vicar.
‘Yes,’ said Thomas. ‘He’s having them every day.’
Adjacent eyes made momentary contact and Susan took up the interrogation with an expression of no little concern.
‘Why, Thomas?’
‘It’s his illness.’
‘But who is giving him enemas?’
‘My mother and grandmother.’
‘Is there a nurse in attendance?’ said Potts.
‘No, my mother got rid of her.’
Potts heard this with some seriousness, pulled out a chair and Thomas was required to sit. He did so reluctantly, still clutching the ears and bottle. Seating himself opposite, Potts took a last smack at the cigarette and seemed grateful to put it out.
‘Now, look here,’ he repeated. ‘I know this might be difficult, but I assure you of its importance. Are you sure, absolutely sure, they are giving your grandfather enemas?’
‘Yes,’ said Thomas, and he felt a kind of dizziness, realising he was drunk.
‘But do you know?’ said Potts, moving in behind his lenses. ‘I mean, can you tell me exactly what an enema is?’
‘Don’t you know?’ said Thomas.
‘Of course, we know,’ said Mrs Potts, joining them on the chairs. ‘But we want to know if you know.’
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ said Potts, instinctively reaching for his Player’s, ‘because of the potential seriousness of enemas in his condition. I’m not a doctor, but have had some medical experience, and in my opinion, and the opinion of Mrs Potts, who is a trained nurse, an enema, administered to a man in a condition so enfeebled, by, shall I say “amateurs”, seems most inappropriate.’
‘The enema,’ offered Thomas, ‘is the cause of his condition, and if it doesn’t improve he’ll have to go back into hospital.’
They both looked at each other again.
‘I think you’re confused, aren’t you, Thomas?’ said Mrs Potts.
‘Confused?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Potts. ‘The boy’s got it wrong.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Thomas. ‘I’d better go now.’ And he attempted to stand.
‘Sit down,’ ordered Potts. ‘Now listen, I don’t need details, but will you just tell me, roughly, what you know about an enema?’
Thomas felt unbearably uncomfortable – no way could he just sit here and describe so intimate a procedure in front of this duo. He put out a smile that went nowhere and was useless.
‘But if you already know?’ he said.
‘Listen to me,’ said Potts, getting quite stiff about it, ‘we haven’t got time to sit here playing games. This is important, and we demand to know what you know.’
Thomas looked at them, one either side of the table, Potts with palms down and almost out of the chair, and Mrs Potts, trying to get her face level with his and sort of nodding as if it would help with the description …
‘Well … I … I …’
‘Yes? Yes?’
‘Perhaps a cup of tea?’ suggested Mrs Potts.
‘Tea?’ snapped Potts. ‘He doesn’t want tea. He’s not getting tea until he tells us all he knows.’
Thomas looked down, and they looked at him, and he could feel the pressure of their stares. It was clear he wasn’t getting out of this kitchen until the question of the enema had been dealt with.
‘Come on,’ said Potts.
He could hear the blood in his brain, a cocktail of booze and embarrassment, and he thought if he looked at them he might laugh. Feeling almost faint with it, he took a deep breath and realised the words were already spilling out …
‘The injection of some liquid, or gaseous fluid into …’
‘What?’ shouted Potts.
‘The anus,’ wailed Thomas, face up and purple with anxiety.
‘My God, it’s true,’ said Potts. ‘He knows,’ and he took off down the kitchen towards Jumo. The black was still skinning, on his feet with a rabbit in the air like an accordion at maximum stretch. He was tugging in a frenzy, feet in one fist, fur in the other, separation somehow prevented by the animal’s head.
‘He don’t want to come off,’ said Jumo.
But as he said it, it did – the wretched thing flew apart and joined a pile of bloody others on the table. Thomas remained bent over the opposite end, throbbing with embarrassment.
‘How long has this being going on?’ whispered Mrs Potts, adopting the gentle approach.
He couldn’t look at her.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They’ve been doing it in private.’
‘Secretly?’ she said. ‘You mean, secretly?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Thomas, and he’d have said anything to get out of here.
Susan got up quietly and also made her way down the kitchen. Jumo had turned to wash hands and there was a rendezvous around him in the general area of the sink. Thomas couldn’t hear what they were saying, at least what Potts was saying, because it was all in a low mumble as though some sort of religious conversation were taking place. Occasionally Jumo looked across at Thomas and said, yes, yes, yes, in quick succession. They were obviously filling him in. Finally Potts and Mrs Potts returned to the table, sitting again in opposite chairs. The Vicar’s demeanour was grave.
‘You were right to have told us about this, Thomas,’ he said. ‘It may be nothing, it may indeed be considered necessary for your grandfather’s well-being.’ Thomas nodded. ‘But neither my wife, nor I, nor Dr Jumo, have ever heard of such a treatment carried out by lay people, at home, in a case such as your grandfather’s.’
‘Unheard of,’ said Mrs Potts.
‘And we feel,’ said Potts, ‘that it is our duty to speak to your mother about this. Not to interfere of course, we don’t seek to interfere. But I have known your grandfather, albeit in a formal way, for many years, and it would be less than charitable of me not to put my mind at ease on his behalf. Don’t you agree?’
‘Yes,’ said Thomas.
‘Now, you mustn’t worry about what you’ve said – leave it to us. You can go home and have no reason for recriminations over the very personal family matters you have chosen, quite rightly, to tell us about.’
Thomas stared at the rabbit and bottle in his lap feeling completely confused. It seemed, according to Potts, that he’d come into their kitchen, sat down, and of his own free will engaged in conversation and passed on intimate details about his grandfather’s illness out of a sense of righteousness. There was something very worrying about that. He knew not what they might be, but was suddenly very concerned for the consequences.
‘You’re going to talk to my mother?’ he said.
‘Rest assured.’
‘What will you say to her?’
‘I will not say, I will ask. I will want to know why your grandfather is having so peculiar a treatment, for so serious an illness. Once a week would hardly seem indicated, once a day is astonishing.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Thomas.
‘And neither do we, young man, that’s why the Reverend intends to speak to your mother.’
‘Just as soon as possible,’ said Potts. ‘Time is not on our side.’
‘Pardon?’
‘The end shall surely come, Thomas, come to us all. But no matter how intentioned, it is at the hand of God and not for mortals to decide.’
What the fuck was he talking about? What ‘mortals’? It suddenly crossed Thomas’s mind that this idiot thought his mother and grandmother were trying to murder Walter with enemas. A cigarette was in the Vicar’s mouth and the first punishing drag vacuumed down. Jumo, who had been hovering at the peripheries, now took this ‘mortals’ business as his cue to move in.
‘Whatever be resolved,’ he said, ‘grandfather must not be afraid of death.’
‘No, no,’ gurgled Potts. ‘That would never do …’
A wheeze wiped out the rest of the sentence. He was still trying to speak, and again appeared to be on the verge, when incredibly, another great draft walloped into his lungs and asphyxiated him. Ripping the cigarette from his mouth he disappeared from view and came up fighting for breath over the rabbits.
‘Are you,’ he heaved, ‘afraid of death?’
‘Death?’ said Thomas.
‘Yes, death,’ he said, recovering some wind. ‘Are you afraid of death?’
‘Yes.’
Floating on whites, Jumo’s eyes rose to the ceiling, and with hands in pensive clasp he moved in with his God and accent.
‘You must not be afraid of salvation. Fear of death poisons de joy of life. If life were de only importance, God would cease to exist, isn’t am?’
Thomas looked at this blood-stained fanatic and didn’t know what he was getting at.
‘Life,’ continued Jumo, ‘is but a bubble hanging on a thread of faith.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Potts, ‘that’s a good way of putting it.’
‘Think of life as a soap-bubble,’ said Jumo. ‘Your bubble forms, your bubble bursts, but that does not mean God, aren’t faith in that God, distroyed. We am not insects, isn’t us?’
‘No.’
‘Do you understand what he’s telling you?’ said Potts.
‘No.’
‘No,’ he repeated, at last losing the butt in the ashtray. ‘At your age, death is difficult, I appreciate that.’
The boy’s ignorance clearly presented a challenge. According to reputation, Potts was no spiritual half-wit, and wasn’t short of penetrating analogy when faced with problems of the trade. (The parish magazine Significance had devoted space to his Christmas thesis, ‘Santa Claus, The Profit of Greed’, causing indignation amongst shopkeepers. He got into Sunday schools with stuff like this and put the wind up two hundred nine year olds. Letters appeared in the Thanet Times. One man said Potts had cut his cracker sales in half. But Potts triumphed, managing to persuade the flock that the man going up the hill was a reality, while the man coming down the chimney was a capitalist myth …)
‘Let me see if I can put Dr Jumo’s idea to you more simply,’ he said. ‘God blows the bubble pipe, God holds the pin?’
He raised eyebrows at his wife, seeking approval.
‘Precisely,’ she said, glad for the inclusion. ‘The bubble is only temporarily ours.’
‘I see,’ said Thomas.
‘We am not afraid when God blow through de pipe to create life; we must not be afraid when God choose to invoke de pinprick to take that life away.’
It was now impossible for Thomas to look at any of them, but all were looking at him, and it was apparent they expected some kind of answer.
‘I’m not afraid of the pipe, or the pin,’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t expect you to be,’ said Potts.
‘Why should he be?’ demanded his wife. ‘At fifteen your bubble is hardly formed.’
‘Quite,’ said Potts.
‘De prick is a long way away,’ said Jumo.
‘My word, yes,’ said Mrs Potts. ‘When you’re young, you just don’t think about it. The prospect of the prick never entered my mind until I met the Reverend, and by then I was thirty.’
For a moment Thomas thought he was hearing things, and on the instant was assaulted with an overwhelming desire to laugh. She’d actually said it, but none of them seemed to realise what she’d said. Potts said something else but Thomas wasn’t listening, he was fighting to keep his arse on the chair. For some reason Jumo and the Vicar were now conversing in Urdu. Thomas was convulsed with laughter, silent and agonising, a residual perhaps of his liaison with Maurice, but he was crying with it.
‘Yes,’ said Potts. ‘Hip Hip, bandy bottle, goon hooter.’
It was amazing but evident that as yet the theologians were completely unaware of the turmoil going on in the boy. It took constriction of every muscle in Thomas’s body to have a go at speech …
‘I have to go now,’ he said.
‘Go where?’ said Mrs Potts.
‘Play darts,’ said Thomas, rising hunched with his animal.
‘Darts?’ said Potts. ‘How can you play darts?’
‘I have to.’
Thomas couldn’t look at him, his jaw was welded, his head nodding as laughter bombarded his stomach.
‘But what about your grandfather?’
‘What about him?’ gasped Thomas, addressing the Reverend’s boots. ‘Will he get better?’
‘Of course not,’ said Potts. ‘He’s dying of cancer.’
‘Cancer?’ said Thomas. ‘Cancer?’ And that was it, full-blown hysterics right into the bastard’s face.
‘Good God,’ said Potts.
He lunged aggressively and Thomas tried to strike him with the rabbit.
‘Keep away from me, Vicar Potts.’
‘Blimey,’ said Jumo.
A bit of a scuffle was developing. Susan Potts chipped in.
‘He threw Maurice out of bed.’
‘What?’ bellowed Potts.
‘Threw him out,’ said Susan.
‘You little swine! You little spiv! How can you laugh at cancer!’ And this delivered after him, ‘Stay away from my son!’
Thomas wasn’t listening. Swinging the bottle and dumping the rabbit, he was already halfway down the hall, laughing his head off as at last he hit the front door.