‘Gordon ! Are you out of your mind?’
She couldn’t help herself. She knew it was wrong, she knew it was ridiculous to speak like that when he had opened the two fresh bottles purely in order to upset her. He smiled narrowly beneath his narrow moustache.
‘Mind?’ he said.
‘He’s had a pint of beer already. And sherry. Gordon, he’s fifteen. No child’s used to it.’
‘The boy asked for a little more ale, Edith.’
Timothy was red-faced, his lips wetly glistening, the upper one speckled with foam. His eyes were stupid-looking.
‘A gooseberry in a lift,’ he said.
‘I told you not to take the sherry,’ she cried, suddenly shrill.
He laughed, wagging his head. ‘D’you get it, though? Up and down in a lift. A gooseberry in a lift.’
She asked him to try and be sensible. He looked absurd, sitting there with his head wagging.
‘Bloke in a cafe: “Do you serve crabs?” “Sit down, mister, we serve anyone.” This bloke goes into this cafe, see, and says do they serve crabs –’
‘Yes, yes, of course, Timothy.’
‘Ever read books, Mrs Abigail?’
She didn’t reply. He couldn’t see if she was smiling or not. He couldn’t see her teeth but she could easily be smiling and not showing her teeth. Her sister hadn’t shown her teeth for an instant, the time she’d given him the choice of her Quality Street. Funny thing, really, a woman handing out sweets on a promenade just because she met someone else. ‘I met the boy,’ Plant had whispered that night when he’d returned to the bedroom, and then a giggling had started even before Plant closed the bedroom door. Plant was the type who was always coming out of toilets, the Ladies in the car-park, anywhere you liked. Another time Rose-Ann and Len had been on the job, on the hearth-rug in the lounge, when he’d walked in after the pictures. They hadn’t turned a hair.
The room moved slightly. On the other side of the table the Commander slipped about, to the left and then to the right, overlapping himself so that he had more than one pair of eyes and more than one moustache. ‘You’ve gone and got him drunk,’ her voice said, sounding distant, as though she were on the other end of a telephone.
Feeling that a further drink of beer would settle his vision, Timothy finished what was in his glass. He liked beer very much. Alone in the Youth Centre one afternoon, the first time he’d ever tasted beer, he’d found two bottles which someone had hidden at the back of a cupboard. No beer was permitted on the premises, only Coca-Cola or Pepsi, but often for a special occasion some was smuggled in. He’d taken the two bottles to the Youth Centre lavatory and had drunk the beer they contained, not expecting to like it but drinking it because it didn’t belong to him. He’d left the bottles sitting in the lavatory-pan in the hope that someone would use it before noticing they were there. He’d walked out into a sunny afternoon feeling tip-top. Ever since, he’d drunk what beer he could manage to get hold of.
He poured more now. He was aware that she was asking him not to. The liquid reached the top of his glass and overflowed on to the tablecloth because when he’d been smiling at her he’d forgotten to stop pouring it.
‘Whoa up there, old chap,’ the Commander protested with his tinny laugh.
‘Is Miss Lavant your sister, Mrs Abigail?’
He felt her fingers on his, taking the bottle from his hand. He said it didn’t matter, she could have it if she wanted it, he wouldn’t deprive her of a drink. Her sister was always fashionably dressed on account of the thing with Dr Greenslade. Her sister had no children either, he reminded her, and fashionable though she was she didn’t like to show her teeth.
The Commander was amused again. He was pointing at his wife with his thumb, only the thumb kept slipping about, like a bunch of thumbs. He was shaking his head and laughing.
‘I haven’t a sister,’ she said quietly.
‘My dad scarpered, Mrs Abigail.’
‘Yes I know, Timothy.’
‘He couldn’t stand it, a squawking baby around the place. If they’d taken precautions I wouldn’t be sitting here.’
He saw her nodding. He smiled across the table at her.
‘This woman goes into the kitchen, Mrs Abigail, and the kid’s there with the gold-fish bowl –’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Timothy!’
She was trying to take the glass away from him, but he didn’t want her to. He held on to it, smiling, with one eye closed in order to see properly. He heard her saying he’d better have some hot tea, but as soon as she released her hold on the glass he lifted it to his mouth and drank some more beer. The Commander was saying something about a young man growing up. She was trying to seize the glass again.
He began to laugh because it was really funny, the way she would keep pulling at the glass and the way the Commander’s face was sliding all over the place, and the way he himself was dying to go to the bog. His fingers slipped from the glass and some more of the beer got spilt, which caused him to laugh even more.
‘I need to go toilet,’ he pointed out, endeavouring to get to his feet and finding it difficult. ‘Toilet,’ he repeated, suddenly recalling the two beer bottles sitting in the lavatory-pan in the Youth Centre.
‘Come on then, old chap.’ The Commander was standing beside him, not sitting across the table any more. ‘Steady up, old chap,’ the Commander said.
Odd as square eggs they were. Standing up or sitting down, it didn’t matter a penny: really funny they were, funnier than the Dasses by two million miles. Ridiculous it was, the woman saying she hadn’t a sister. ‘Charrada,’ he said, up on his feet, with the Commander’s arm supporting him. ‘You’re out with a blonde, Mrs –’
‘Manage now, old chap?’ the Commander interrupted. ‘All right on your own, eh?’
The room was moving again, going down at one end and then coming slowly back again. She was on about giving alcohol to a child. The Commander was saying to have sense.
‘We did charades at the Comprehensive,’ he told them because as far as he could remember he hadn’t told them before. ‘Only the Wilkinson woman let the whole thing out of control. They had me done out as Elizabeth the First, jewellery, the lot. I must go to the bog, Commander.’
He felt better now that he’d got the hang of being on his feet. He crossed the room, opened the door without assistance and closed it behind him. He moved towards the lavatory, resolving that when he’d finished there he’d slip into the sitting-room and have another glass of sherry since she wasn’t keen on his taking any more Watney’s Pale. He whistled in the lavatory, saying to himself that he was as drunk as a cork. He felt really fantastic.
In the dining-room, meanwhile, there was silence. Mrs Abigail poured two cups of tea and handed one across the table to her husband.
‘Dear girl, it’s not my fault if the boy had a drop too much.’
‘Then who’s fault is it, Gordon?’ She knew it was as wrong to say that as it had been to ask him if he was out of his mind. Yet she still couldn’t help herself. No one could just sit there.
‘The boy asked for it, you know. I told you he asked for it.’
‘He asked for it because you’ve given him a taste for it. It’s silly, Gordon. Drinking sherry with a schoolboy, bringing in beer. You never bought beer in your life before, Gordon.’
‘No harm in a glass of ale, dear girl. Prince Charles takes a glass, the Duke of Edinburgh –’
‘Oh, nonsense, Gordon.’ She spoke in a way that was most unlike her, not caring what she said now because it had all become so silly. ‘And another thing. All that talk about going into a grocer’s shop. What on earth interest d’you think it is to a boy of fifteen?’
He delighted in her agitation. There was pleasure in a fleeting little smile that came and was quickly banished. He said snappishly:
‘It’s of historical interest, for a start. Are you saying it’s wrong for a lad to know the facts about his country?’