Wonderboy Read online

  The lawn tidier. “That’s terrible,” I say.

  Tod regards Tina with moon eyes. Death doesn’t scare him—in fact he enjoys it. I thought he’d be upset when I ran over a rabbit, but he nagged me to perform a swift U-turn and drive back, so he could examine the corpse.

  “All done,” Tina says. “Want me to do something with his eyebrow?” Tod jerks his head around to face me. “I could trim it,” she suggests, “make it less…dramatic.”

  “Let’s just leave it,” I say.

  Tod has been clippered into respectability. He has best-kept hair. I take my mini accountant home.

  Marcus shows up in sizzling good humor, having fully recovered, thanks to Nettie’s whiskey and lemon. He is being Good Dad, up there in Tod’s room, admiring the haircut and quizzing him on the Egyptian project.

  Much later, in bed, I think about faking, but worry that I’ll overact and wake Tod or trigger a livestock nightmare. He had another last night. I found him babbling about being overpowered by flapping poultry, and when I grasped his quivering hand, he sobbed, “Don’t like it, Mum, that nasty red skin on their heads.”

  Marcus rolls off and turns away from me. Only our feet are touching.

  “I know,” I say suddenly.

  “What? You know what?” He springs up and stares at me.

  “I know where Dog is. Tod was playing in the shed at the weekend. That’s where he left Dog.”

  “Christ, Ro. Is that what you think about when we have sex?”

  part two

  A complex pattern of pathways can disorient the unsuspecting visitor.

  chapter 6

  Happy Birthday

  Re: Gorby Cottage, 18 Main Street, Chetsley

  Date: February 10

  Observations:

  — High moisture content readings noted at several locations esp at rear of property indicating severe rising damp.

  — Softness in timber floors indicative of sub-floor rot.

  — Severe infestation of woodborer Anobium punctatum noted in roof timbers above main dwelling house.

  Recommendations:

  — Remove plaster to height of one meter at rear wall. Inject with chemical damp-proof course.

  — Install sub-floor ventilation.

  — Chemical eradication of Anobium punctatum and replacing of floor timbers where necessary.

  DAMPBLASTERS: FOR WOODWORM,

  DRY/WET ROT AND RISING DAMP ∗

  PERSONAL ATTENTION ALWAYS

  I slip Mr. Leech’s quote into our House & Cars file, grateful now for Marcus’s organizational skills. You want words like infestation and eradication well out of sight. Knowing that woodworm has a proper name, a creature name, makes it seem more threatening. You imagine it gnawing and puncturing, lunching on the very fabric of your home.

  Our other post is a postcard from Dad, depicting a Spanish dancer with a red and gold stuck-on satin skirt. It reads: Hope you’re settling into your new home, we are all fine, love, Dad. It must have taken him weeks to come up with such a heart-felt message.

  Of course there was someone else, my mother was sure of it. Would Dad have swished off to Majorca alone? Someone would be with him at that fish restaurant. She would be wearing a sarong and bikini top. “One of those skimpy ones,” Mum raged down the phone, “like two hankies that tie at the bust.”

  Actually, I knew the real story, at least the version Dad had told Natalie in a letter. He had become close—that’s the word he used, close—to a woman called Freda who manned the cheese counter at our local deli. My parents weren’t comfortable with delis; those enormous sausages were too strange, with their streaks of fat and gnarled-looking skins. But Dad loved those pale, mild cheeses—Wensleydale, Cheshire—and Freda would often throw in an extra slice and not charge him. Sometimes he would come home with a new kind of olive, which no one in our family liked, but which Dad would nibble at gamely.

  He left Mum for her, the kind cheese lady. They moved to Majorca—I haven’t seen Dad in nearly six years—and set up several ill-advised businesses, the latest of which is a soft play center called The Funhouse. I cannot imagine why anyone would wish to endure a visit to an indoor playground where five drops of rain fall all summer. I stick Dad’s postcard next to the tradespeople list, and glimpse Lucille’s card on the shelf. Those Anobium punctatum are making me itch. I need treatment.

  Fab-U-Look smells of vanilla. The reception area teeters with glass shelving bearing bottles of honey-colored fluids. Lucille greets me in a crisp white tunic with her hair pulled back, flat against her scalp.

  I am waxed by a younger girl with baby skin and cotton-thin eyebrows. She talks constantly about her boyfriend, who is a butcher and can do me an excellent deal on half a lamb, if my freezer could accommodate such a beast. “Has your husband ever had anything done?” the girl asks, ripping gauze and possibly several layers of skin from my shins.

  “Do men have their legs waxed?”

  “Mostly backs, shoulders, chests—that’s pretty painful. Their hair’s coarser than ours. It’s much worse for a man.” Maybe ordinary men, who get nervous when confronted with salad, have hot wax applied and torn off at great speed. But not Marcus. His only problem area is the nasal hair, and he has the trimmer for that.

  When the girl has finished, I touch my legs. Though angrily mottled, the epidermis is intact. I feel cleaner, less infested by woodworm. Unaccustomed to having anything done—apart from the odd speedy haircut—I thank her too much and leave an embarrassingly generous tip on the reception desk. “Gosh,” Lucille says, “that’s way too much.” I am acting like a poncey Londoner, flinging money about.

  In Hamiltons toyshop I am aware of smelling oddly, like plant juice. My shins still feel raw. I buy a metal robot with a key stuck in its hip, and yellow binoculars on a cord. They come to less than the waxing girl’s tip.

  These are extra birthday presents for Tod to open when he wakes up tomorrow. Marcus has decided to stay over in London tonight and spend the morning choosing something really special in the West End. For a fan of the countryside, he was distinctly unkeen to shop for our son in Lexley High Street. “You could have planned it,” I said, when he called me earlier, “so he’d have his big present when he wakes up tomorrow.” So you’ll be there, to say happy birthday in person, is what I meant.

  “Does it matter?” he asked.

  “Of course it matters. I suggested lots of things you could have picked up during the week. You promised—”

  “And I don’t work in the week. I don’t have a business to run.”

  “Fuck your business, Marcus. This is Tod’s—”

  The phone went dead.

  I should have bought Tod’s main present. I don’t work, Tod’s at school; what do I do all day? As his mother, I should have had this sorted out weeks ago.

  Does it matter? Marcus said. Didn’t he tell me that his parents made every birthday perfect for him, with a cake shaped like a tank or a racing car, or a replica of the red-and-white rocket from Tintin? He can remember which cake he received each year from age five to eleven.

  Don’t tell me that birthdays don’t matter.

  I wrap the robot and binoculars in blue tissue, and decorate the parcels with a silver pen. Beneath my feet, the Anobium punctatum will be settling down for a post-lunch nap. Across the street, Wyn Beadie’s front door is wide open, but there’s no one around. I must stop this, prowling at windows, staring out.

  I call Suzie to rant about Marcus who won’t be there on his son’s sixth birthday, at least not until lunchtime. She says, “Ro? Hang on. Barney get down from that stool—you’ll crack your skull open. Remember last time?”

  There’s a yelp, like a young animal having its foot run over. Suzie visits casualty so often, her kids are familiar with every toy in the waiting room. She reckons she deserves a loyalty card. “I’ll post Tod’s present on Monday,” she says, then, “Shit, there’s blood on your forehead. Are you trying to give me a breakdown?”

&nbs
p; “Suzie?” I say into the crackling air.

  I want to phone Marcus, to say sorry for shouting and swearing, or swear some more, or suggest that we should invest in a new fridge that’s large enough to house half a lamb.

  I don’t know why I need to hear his voice. I just do.

  Saturday. My son is six. Last year he was up at five-thirty, ripping off paper, but today I find him still asleep at nine a.m. He must have got up in the night and done a drawing. It’s been stuck wonkily to the wall, a cross-section of a pyramid—entitled PIRIMID—with a tangle of passageways inside.

  I draw the single curtain and when I look back, his eyes are open, peering stickily.

  “Can I have my presents?” he asks.

  I want to put off the opening ceremony in case he’s disappointed by the tin robot and cheap binoculars. We seem to have lost track of what to buy him, how to excite him.

  Last birthday, Marcus presented him with a white rat in a cage with a clear Perspex tunnel to make its life more interesting. I’d never been able to stomach rodents—rats, mice, even hamsters and gerbils—since that time I wandered into the bathroom of our old house. I must have been around ten. I know I was allowed to run my own bath, that Mum had decided that I was unlikely to boil myself alive. There, in the toilet, its rear end and tail jutting out from the water, was the creature. A glossy, nutty brown rat. Its tail looked like thick, wet rope. I turned to run, screaming, and slammed my forehead on the door frame, requiring seven stitches at St. Luke’s Hospital.

  “Don’t you think it’s quite sweet?” Marcus asked, as he carried Tod’s rat through to his room.

  “Marcus,” I said, “I’m not sharing a flat with a rat.”

  The animal stayed, filling Tod’s old room with the whiff of neglect. After a month, I called the shop to enquire about their pet-minding service for families on holiday, and handed the animal over.

  We weren’t really going on holiday. I wanted to conduct an experiment to see if Tod would miss it. The rat hadn’t even been named. It was just an it. But still, I felt mean, as if I had conned the animal into thinking that this was a trial separation, when the relationship was definitely over. Two weeks later, the pet shop man left a message, asking if we were back from holiday. The animal had outstayed its welcome. “We have limited space in the shop,” the man said. “I’m sure you understand our position.”

  Marcus disapproved of my tactic. He said that I should have coaxed Tod into connecting with the animal and forming a relationship with it. But Tod didn’t even notice it had gone. I never went back to collect it. As far as I know, a nameless rat still resides at Healthy Pets, 119 Lyall Road, London E3.

  Tod now opens the robot parcel. He seems pleased, more pleased than he was with the bike that accompanied the rat. He winds up the robot and sends it skittering across the worn bedroom carpet.

  Mum and Perry have sent a card depicting a goalkeeper leaping for a ball, plus ten pounds. My sister Natalie—Ms. Efficiency—has had each of her children make Tod a card (involving paint, smudged chalk and gummed shapes—she always has the right kind of art materials), and sent a sporty red V-neck top, which Tod pulls on over his pajamas. Suzie’s card comes with an “I am six” badge, loose cola bottle sweets that have gummed themselves to the back of the card and a scrawled note that reads, Present late sorry.

  “Where’s Dad?” Tod asks, examining me through the yellow binoculars.

  “He’s in London, choosing something really special for you.”

  “More presents?”

  “Well, these are just little things.”

  “I like them,” he says, hugging me with unexpected force, overwhelmed with the joy of being six.

  To take Tod’s mind off the fact Marcus has failed to appear by two p.m., I am taking him on a birthday outing to Summerlea House. I am beyond angry now, and have banned myself from calling Marcus. Verbal communication would require shouting and overuse of the f-word, which you simply don’t do on a birthday.

  From the leaflet I picked up in the library, Summerlea House appears to offer your usual stately home fare: the heads of dead antlered animals, weapons in glass cases, a tearoom offering thin sandwiches. But in the grounds is a maze. It’s planted with yew hedges, which swirl gracefully around a small mound at its center. On the mound is an octagonal summerhouse, from which you can admire the pathways from above. Tod prepares a picnic, battering Cheddar with a blunt knife. He snaps breadsticks in two so they’ll fit in his lunchbox. The binoculars bulge from his back pocket.

  Summerlea House is around ten miles the other side of Lexley. Tod flumps in the passenger seat, clutching the map. He is aware that his mother has a shoddy sense of direction. I am not proud of this; nothing is more irritating than grown women boasting that they are unable to perform simple tasks, like remove jam jar lids or hold a screwdriver correctly. Tod hums to himself, examining Lexley High Street through his binoculars.

  “It’s that building again,” he reports.

  “That’s the library,” I tell him. We have passed it three times due to a section of the High Street being dug up and traffic being diverted down the narrow lane beside Fab-U-Look.

  “Are we lost?” Tod enquires.

  “Of course we’re not lost. We will be, if you keep asking. I’m trying to keep my mind on the road.”

  Tod opens his lunchbox and nibbles the plastic-looking cheese. We are out of Lexley now, but not on the road to Summerlea House. The map on Tod’s lap is smattered with cheese particles. He traces roads with a finger. “Left,” he shouts, and I swing the car into a cul-de-sac of immaculate bungalows with a clump of toddlers straddling toy vehicles on the pavement.

  I am expecting too much, that a boy who turned six only this morning should be able to map-read with any accuracy. How dumb to assume that he’d make some whopping developmental leap.

  “It’s that building again,” he retorts, pointing out—quite rightly—that we have arrived back in Lexley. “I feel sick,” he adds.

  “Do you? Stop looking at the map. Open the window.” Tod winds the window down fully and shivers. “Didn’t you bring a jumper?” I ask.

  He shakes his head and stares at his lap, as if deliberately wanting to upset his insides. He chews cheese mournfully. It’s freezing in the car with the window wide open. “I’ll be all right,” he says weakly, “as long as you drive slow.”

  “This is slow.”

  “There’s that building again,” he mutters.

  I am angry now, dithering at nine miles per hour with a silver Espace crawling up my rear end, flashing and tooting impatiently. Tod burps into cupped hands. He opens his lunchbox and piles more cheese into his mouth.

  “Stop eating,” I shout. “It’ll make you feel even more sick.”

  He is sniveling now, batting back tears with inky fingers. I’ve upset him, on his birthday. I wonder what good I do him—really, if it’s the best thing for Tod, being around me so much. Does it matter who meets him at the school gates? It’s not like we talk much on the way home. Would his world shatter if a child-minder picked him up while I commuted to London with Marcus? Anna would have me back in a blink. She said that the place is collapsing without me. Unable to add new acquisitions to the PC, she has resorted to the old card index system.

  “Are we nearly there yet?” Tod asks.

  We have successfully located a road out of Lexley that leads to an expanse of muddy ground where a supermarket is being built. A sign boasts that the supermarket will offer a café, post office and banking facilities. “It’s round the next corner,” I snap.

  Back in Lexley High Street I take the next left, which looks like a proper road but leads to a primary school playground where elderly women are setting out potted cacti on trestle tables. “The maze,” reads the inside cover of Tod’s favorite book, “is simply a puzzle to be navigated from start to finish. Will you ever find your way out?”

  “I need the toilet,” reports Tod.

  We are on the right road. I’m awas
h with euphoria. Here I am, a lone mother in control, negotiating her way through unfamiliar surroundings to take her birthday son to a maze that will remain forever etched in his memory.

  “Toilet,” Tod repeats, writhing in his seat.

  “Wait until we’re properly out of town. You can pee at the roadside.”

  “It’s not a pee. It’s a poo.”

  I drive faster now, with cold air blasting my cheek.

  “I’m desperate,” Tod says.

  “You can’t do a poo until we get to the big house. I haven’t brought any tissues.”

  “Or my jumper,” Tod adds, banging his teeth together.

  We’re pushing seventy now, and there’s a brown sign, the kind used for places of interest, saying Summerlea House Next Left. I speed up, crunching a breadstick, letting it hang out of my mouth like a cigarette. We zip past a slow-moving car. The driver glances at me, looking alarmed. I wish Marcus was here, to witness me traveling from A to B so efficiently. He enjoys driving and planning how to get places. When he gives me directions, I gawp until his mouth becomes a gyrating sausage and he stares, as if checking that the vital facts—first exit at roundabout, sharp right turn after Shell garage—have attached themselves to my brain.

  “Stop the car,” demands Tod. His face is contorted, like genuine pain’s going on.

  “Hang on two minutes. Stop thinking about it.”

  He shuts his lunchbox firmly. “There’s a smell,” he says.

  “You haven’t,” I say, glaring at him.

  “Not that. A burning smell.”

  I turn left, confident that Summerlea House will offer adequate toilet facilities including the roaring hand dryers that Tod enjoys so much.

  “There’s a stink,” he says.

  “It’s manure, Tod. That’s what the countryside smells like.”

  But it’s not manure. When I inhale there’s a rubbery burning, accompanied by subtle, then more dramatic smoke effects eking from the bonnet.