The Aunts tried not to notice. They emptied their cups and folded up their napkins. The only sign of annoyance as far as I could make out was Aunt Odette’s eyebrow shooting up. She must have been seething with disapproval.
Unlike Flora and Alice, who were always telling me to be quiet and behave myself, and whose clips on the ear were more like caresses, Aunt Odette bottled up her anger. When I was making a nuisance of myself and wouldn’t listen, she would sometimes grab me by the back of the neck, sinking a fingernail into the skin like a sting. She didn’t join in the “carambas” of the others when I played bullfighter to my father’s bull, chivalrously dropping to my knees after the coup de grâce to hug him and staunch his wounds.
She sipped her drink, never gulped it down. In the evening she would sit on the bench under the rose bush with her eyes closed, soaking up the light of the setting sun, as if she possessed no warmth of her own and had to seek it elsewhere.
On my wanderings through the house I sometimes came upon her unexpectedly in the vicinity of the cellar or in the larder, where sausages and rashers were kept on the highest shelves, well out of my reach. Why she furtively scooped spoonfuls of butter, or trickled coffee beans into a box with deft, practised fingers, was a mystery to me. She counted the number of scoops, and listened attentively to the beans hitting the bottom of the box as if they were just as valuable as the coins in her soft leather purse, which I was permitted to hold occasionally, but never to open.
I was equally mystified as to why, back in her room, she stored away her prizes, adding butter to butter and coffee to coffee or pouring sugar from a scrap of paper twisted into a cone on top of the sugar she already possessed.
It was as though she could not abide depletion of any kind. The drawers of her wardrobe emitted a permanent aroma of roasted coffee beans, crystalised fruit and chocolate. The smoky scent of sliced ham suggested a state of overabundance that would never end. Perhaps, like me, she was overcome with an inexplicable sadness at the sight of anything becoming less than it was before. The jam jar, which, after each breakfast, had less and less jam in it and more and more unpardonable emptiness. The dismal sight of empty preserving jars and bottles on the shelves in the cellar, their mouths agape in a rictus of thirst.
The same sadness spread through me now as I contemplated the table before me. The beaker of milk, still generous and full. The plate with the sliced bread, not as yet chewed by my teeth, the promise they held intact.
Perhaps Aunt Odette understood only too well what was holding me back. Thrilled and subdued by the thought of the sheer plenty, of all that food having to vanish without trace, I clutched a slice of bread in both fists without taking a single bite. I didn’t care if Roland was giving me scornful looks.
“You’re dawdling again, I do believe,” my mother sighed. She pulled the bread from my hands. “I haven’t got all day.”
She fed me my sandwich at top speed, barely allowing me the time to swallow. Then she reached for my beaker of milk and tilted it firmly against my mouth. I struggled to push the beaker away, and the milk nearly went up my nose.
I gasped for breath and glanced around the room, smacking my lips.
“The lad’s such a slow eater,” one of the Aunts said.
“He’s in a dream,” said Aunt Odette, “the image of his father at that age. He used to sit and stare at his food just like that.”
My stomach began to rumble loudly, and a sudden cramp convulsed my gut. I gave a little moan.
All eyes turned to me.
“Something coming? Ah, something coming, is that it?” giggled Aunt Alice. Roland was grinning too.
I went red in the face. Blood rushed to my cheeks and my stomach went rock-hard. Inside my body it was as though lids were relentlessly being screwed and unscrewed to seal certain ducts and open others.
I couldn’t breathe, and when the twinges of pain shifted from my stomach downwards, there to burst through a thousand membranes, I felt quite dizzy.
“Go on, well done,” the Aunts chirped.
Roland’s mother smiled. “Look at the poor lamb struggling.”
A sigh of relief escaped me. A fresh coolness spread across my cheeks, and I felt so light all of a sudden I was almost lifted right out of my chair.
“There’s a clever boy!” The Aunts clapped their hands.
On other days I would have joined them in their jubilation. I might also have banged my beaker on the table and cheered loudly, but today I was discouraged by Roland’s sniggers.
When my mother pulled the pot out from under me and a rush of startlingly cool air brushed my bottom, I was close to tears.
For all his mother’s admonitions to be quiet and sit still and to mind his manners for goodness’ sake, Roland went on hooting with laughter.
From the stairs came a bellowing man’s voice, “That’s enough!”
Uncle Roger burst into the room, strode up to Roland and slapped him so hard that a blood-red weal appeared on his cheek.
For a second Roland held my gaze. He was speechless, wounded to the quick, and his face went scarlet. Then he scrambled down from his chair and bolted into the corridor, sobbing.
His mother made to get up from the table.
“Let him be,” said Uncle Roger. He tightened the buckle of his belt. “That boy will be the death of us.”
He sat down and poured himself a cup of coffee. Leaning forward to reach for the bread basket, his attention was caught by me.
His face cleared. “So, and how is our little lad?” he asked. “Everything all right then?” And he winked at me.
I winked back at him, with both eyes at the same time. My lips budded out.
CHAPTER 3
HAVING A BATH with my father was infinitely preferable to having one with my mother. With her everything had to be done quickly, no messing about. First she stood me in the empty tub to soap me up from head to toe, then she soaped herself. She didn’t seem to care that the cold was chiselling me out of the warm air and the soap was pricking viciously my eyes.
When I huddled against her legs for protection my fingers strayed across the stretch marks on her lower abdomen, feeling the vertical grooves on either side of her navel. I had seen her stand in front of the mirror, pinching the slack skin between her fingers with a little sigh, as if I had caused her body to split down the middle when she gave birth.
How different her sex was, compared to mine and my father’s, which were like spouts with a knobby lid at the end. Hers seemed to be hiding in its own folds. Past the big bush of hair, it lay curled up like a frightened hedgehog in the shrubbery. When she leaned back to soap her buttocks the strange ridge pouted into view, sliding out from its hiding place between her thighs and quickly back again.
She turned on the tap even more brusquely than other mornings. The warm water restored me to the world of warmth and comfort and my eyes stopped prickling.
A faint smile crossed her face when I shrieked with pleasure, but she had no patience for my delight as I clawed the gush of water and squeezed the sponge to make it pour.
She always had dark rings under her eyes. Her chronic fatigue gave her face the look of the finest, most fragile porcelain, but in fact she was tough. She shelled peas, made the beds. Day after day she would lay the table with a loud clatter so the whole house could hear. With each portion of overcooked vegetables she dished out she was proclaiming her domestic pride — to us of course, but especially to the Aunts. Reminding them that it was she who prepared the bean soup, she who kept their blood pressure down by baking salt-free bread especially for them; indeed that it was she who provided the four meals a day upon which their idle lives depended.