I nodded. "Yes, that'll do fine. You know my likes."
"You don't eat properly. I should have been more strict with you."
I didn't say anything, but kept on eating slowly. I could tell that my father was looking at me from the other end of the table, swilling his juice round in his glass and staring at my head as I bent over my plate. He shook his head and got up from the table, taking his plate to the sink to rinse it. "Are you going out tonight?" he asked, turning on the tap.
"No. I'II stay in tonight. Go out tomorrow night."
"I hope you won't be getting steaming drunk again. You'll be arrested some night and then where will we be?" He looked at me. "Eh?"
"I don't go getting steaming drunk," I assured him. "I just have a drink or two to be sociable and that's all."
"Well, you're very noisy when you come back for somebody who's only been sociable, so you are." He looked at me darkly again and sat down.
I shrugged. Of course I get drunk. What the hell's the point of drinking if you don't get drunk? But I'm careful; I don't want to cause any complications.
"Well, just you be careful, then. I always know how much you've had from your farts." He snorted, as though imitating one.
My father has a theory about the link between mind and bowel being both crucial and very direct. It's another of his ideas which he keeps trying to interest people in; he has a manuscript on the subject ('The State of the Fart') which he also sends away to London to publishers now and again and which they of course send back by return. He has variously claimed that from farts he can tell not only what people have eaten or drunk, but also the sort of person they are, what they ought to eat, whether they are emotionally unstable or upset, whether they are keeping secrets, laughing at you behind your back or trying to ingratiate themselves with you, and even what they are thinking about at the precise moment they issue the fart (this largely from the sound). All total nonsense.
"H'm," I said, non-committal to a fault.
"Oh, I can," he said as I finished my meal and leaned back, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand, more to annoy him that anything else. He kept nodding. "I know when you've had Heavy, or Lager. And I've smelt Guinness off you, too."
"I don't drink Guinness," I lied, secretly impressed. "I'm afraid of getting athlete's throat."
This witticism was lost on him apparently, for without a pause he continued: "It's just money down the drain, you know. Don't expect me to finance your alcoholism."
"Oh, you're being silly," I said, and stood up.
"I know what I'm talking about. I've seen better men than you think they could handle the drink and end up in the gutter with a bottle of the fortified wine." If that last sally was intended to go below the belt, it failed; the "better men than you" line was worked out long ago.
"Well, it's my life, isn't it?" I said and, putting my plate in the sink, left the kitchen. My father said nothing.
That night I watched television and did some paperwork, amending the maps to include the newly named Black Destroyer Hill, writing a brief description of what I'd done to the rabbits and logging both the effects of the bombs that I'd used and the manufacture of the latest batch. I determined to keep the Polaroid with the War Bag in future; for low-risk punitive expeditions like that against the rabbits it would more than repay the extra weight and the amount of time consumed using it. Of course, for serious devilry the War Bag has to go by itself, and a camera would just be a liability, but I haven't had a real threat for a couple of years, since the time some big boys in the town took to bullying me in Porteneil and ambushing me on the path.
I thought things were going to get pretty heavy for a while, but they never did escalate the way I thought they might. I threatened them with my knife once, after they stopped me on my bike and started pushing me around and demanding money. They backed off that time, but a few days later they tried to invade the island. I held them off with steelies and stones, and they fired back with air-guns, and for a while it was quite exciting, but then Mrs Clamp came with the weekly messages and threatened to call the police, and after calling her a few nasty names they left.
I started the cache system then, building up supplies of steelies, stones, bolts and lead fishing-weights buried in plastic bags and boxes at strategic points around the island. I also set up snares and trip-wires linked to glass bottles in the grass on the dunes over the creek, so that if anybody tried to sneak up they would either catch themselves or snag the wire, pulling the bottle out of its hole in the sand and down on to a stone. I sat up for the next few nights, my head poking out of the back skylight of the loft, my ears straining for the tinkle of glass breaking or muffled curses, or the more usual signal of the birds being disturbed and taking flight, but nothing more happened. I just avoided the boys in the town for a while, only going in with my father or at times when I knew they would be in school.
The cache system survives, and I've even added a couple of petrol bombs to one or two of the secret stores, where a likely avenue of attack comes in over terrain the bottles would smash on, but the trip-wires I've dismantled and left in the shed. My Defence Manual, which contains things like maps of the island with the caches marked, likely attack routes, a summary of tactics, a list of weapons I have or might make, includes within this last category quite a few unpleasant things like trip-wires and snares set a body-length away from a concealed broken bottle sticking up in the grass, electrically detonated mines made from pipe-bombs and small nails, all buried in the sand, and a few interesting, if unlikely, secret weapons, like frisbees with razors embedded in the edge.
Not that I want to kill anybody now, but it is all for defence rather than offence, and it does make me feel a lot more secure. Soon I'll have enough money for a really powerful crossbow, and that I'm certainly looking forward to; it'll help make up for the fact that I've never been able to persuade my father to buy a rifle or a shotgun that I could use sometimes. I have my catapults and slings and air-rifle, and they could all be lethal in the right circumstances, but they just don't have the long-range hitting power I really hanker after. The pipebombs are the same. They have to be placed, or at best thrown, at the target, and even slinging some of the purpose-built smaller ones is inaccurate and slow. I can imagine some unpleasant things happening with the sling, too; the sling-bombs have to be on a pretty short fuse if they're to detonate soon enough after they land not to be throw-backable, and I've had a couple of close calls already when they've gone off just after they left the sling.
I've experimented with guns, of course, both mere projectile weapons and mortars which would lob the sling-bombs, but they have all been clumsy, dangerous, slow and rather prone to blowing up.
A shotgun would be ideal, though I'd settle for a.22 rifle, but a crossbow will just have to do. Perhaps sometime I'll be able to devise a way round my official non-existence and apply for a gun myself, though even then, all things considered, I might not be granted a licence. Oh, to be in America, I occasionally think.
I was logging the cache petrol bombs which hadn't been inspected for evaporation recently when the phone went. I looked at my watch, surprised at the lateness of the hour: nearly eleven. I ran downstairs to the phone, hearing my father coming to the door of his room as I passed it.
"Porteneil 531." Pips sounded.
"Fuck it, Frank, I've got luna maria callouses on me feet. How the hell are ye, me young bucko?"
I looked at the handset, then up at my father, who was leaning over the rail from the floor above, tucking his pyjama top into his trousers. I spoke into the phone: "Hello there, Jamie, what are you doing calling me this late?"