The Boy Who Could Keep a Swan in His Head Read online

  If his feelings for his grandmother left him confused, he had no such problem with his mother. He adored her. He loved her the way sons do. It was impossible to find fault. He worshipped her, sometimes in the literal sense. In his darkest moments he prayed for her, through her and occasionally to her. This perfection created a distance, though. Phen felt unworthy. Like his father, he was damaged goods. He was incapable of simple speech, and painfully thin. “A set of pretzel sticks with a belt around the middle.” When he looked in the mirror he couldn’t find anything that resembled his mother. Although there was much evidence to the contrary, he often went to sleep believing he was adopted. They said the grainy black-and-white pictures taken at the hospital were of him. Yet the tiny body was so wrapped up you couldn’t really see anything.

  His mother, on the other hand, was impeccable in all things except her choice of husband and son. Her attractiveness radiated all the more because she never acknowledged it. Any compliment was met with surprise or embarrassment. The more demurely she dressed, the more her physical beauty was shown in contrast. The skirt of appropriate length, the blouse always buttoned, and the tiny scarf worn the French way with a knot on the side were bewitching. Her total lack of awareness of the infatuation she caused lent her an air of serenity. While others scrambled and breathed heavily, she sailed blissfully through, offering another cup of tea or a slice of Madeira cake.

  This calmness, this inner beauty, was as mesmerising as her outer appearance. The brokenness of her husband and son only added to her Madonna-like qualities. Here was a woman who could have had anyone, yet she’d ended up with those two. Could there be any greater self-sacrifice? They’d all seen the pictures of her baking bread in an anthill somewhere in the wilds of Northern Rhodesia. The next picture in the album showed her still smiling, in shorts, outside an old army tent. How long had they lived like that while Dennis tried to make bricks from the river sand and build them a house? And that python the workers were all nervously holding? Eighteen feet long! Measured thirty-six times by the six-inch ruler she kept to make lines for her diary. You couldn’t see the hole in the python’s head, but everyone knew Dennis had to reload his service revolver before actually hitting the target.

  There were no shortages of stories to prove her saintly qualities and eternal patience. The one most told involved Phen’s entry into the world. Not surprisingly, he’d contrived with his father to make it a stop-start affair. He was almost two weeks overdue. Perhaps intuitively aware of what awaited him, he’d chosen to delay his arrival as long as possible. The hospital was two hundred miles away by dirt road, so daily visits were not an option. Nor could she simply “wait it out”. There was work to be done back at the farm. She was in charge of the chicken battery and the daily distribution of its eggs. It was also the only part of the farm that brought in any meaningful income. The doctor agreed on a compromise of weekly check-ins. There was the obvious caveat that “should she feel anything happening” she would immediately head for the hospital. How “immediate” could relevantly relate to two hundred miles of dirt road and an ancient Ford truck was not discussed.

  Phen had heard the story so many times, he’d begun to remember it first-hand. He clearly recalled his mother telling Jam, the kitchen helper, to fetch Boss Dennis. A panting man from Mars arrived and asked if Lil was okay. Lily said she couldn’t hear him and suggested he take his beekeeper mask off. He was reluctant to do so as there were still a few bees on the neckpiece. Jam obliged by flattening them with a fly swatter. This allowed Lil to tell Dennis to his face that “something was happening”. Dennis said maybe he should leave the last two hives until later; Lily felt this was a good idea. When his father looked at his watch, his mother knew something important was flashing through his mind. Time and its measurement were never very high on his list of priorities.

  “It’s nearly dusk,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “The truck’s lights aren’t working and I’m not sure about the fan belt. The motorbike’s fine, though.”

  Even the Blessed Virgin Mary has her limits. “The air turned purple,” his father would always cheerfully recall, clearly proud that he finally got his wife to voice her exasperation. Jam stopped sweeping the dead bees with his broom, placed both palms over his ears and looked out the window. Once Lil had run out of breath, Dennis suggested a glass of orange cordial. Through clenched teeth, she explained thirst was not her paramount concern.

  If it was not going to be side-saddle on the Triumph Tiger, it would have to be the front bench seat of the Ford. Fresh off the assembly line, it must have been a thing of great beauty. British racing green with matching runner boards, the grill seemed to smile above the heavy black bumper. Time, however, had taken its toll. The baked enamel was eczema-ed with rust from bonnet to tailgate. On the passenger door, the small brown craters had joined together to create a hole the size of a fist. You could now stick your hand through and open the door from the inside while standing on the outside. In a clear manifestation of colonial optimism, when the truck had been sold to them, this had been mentioned as a positive feature.

  “She’s no Bentley,” the salesman at Victoria Falls had said. “Still, I doubt you’ll be driving her to Buckingham Palace.”

  Driving her to Livingstone was the challenge. Jam fetched a pillow to allow Lil to rest the small of her back against the peeling upholstery of the seat. He was about to leave, when he found two torches thrust into his hands. He knew not to ask any questions at this stage, as he was sure he wouldn’t understand the answer. Instead, he went to the back to check if the boiled-egg sandwiches had been packed into the picnic basket. He found them next to the brown-and-white-striped thermos flask. He lifted it to make sure it felt full, carefully placed it in the cubbyhole and wedged a spanner against its neck to ensure it stayed upright.

  Unfortunately, Lily, having regained her composure, seemed to give Dennis the licence to lose his. “I want all the stockings and Siddhartha! Now! Quick!”

  Jam had been chosen for both his patience and his ability to get the job done. He ran the household with an easy smile that belied his methodical tenacity. He enjoyed solving problems, even if many of them were created by the man now standing in front of him. He’d taught this man how to plant maize and soya beans, how to kill and pluck a chicken. Where to place the rain tank and why welding near thatch is not a good idea. He’d even helped him with the birth of the calf that had been facing the wrong way. But now he was genuinely mystified. He stood there, again clutching the two torches, waiting to find a link to logic which might make him move.

  “Stockings! Silk or nylon, doesn’t matter! Siddhartha! Finding individual meaning! Hermann Hesse!”

  The man had clearly lost his mind. The condition of his wife had made his brain bulge and explode. She was about to give birth and he wanted to wear her stockings. Plus, that was the one drawer he never went into. It was the ladies’ drawer full of things he couldn’t touch or even think about. When these things were washed, they were put on another line and the women hid them from view by hanging blankets on each side. And who was Siddhartha? He knew no such name. And now there was this Hermann man? He switched the torches on; at least they worked.

  The mad boss opened the bonnet and leaped in as if being eaten by the engine. The pregnant woman called Jam across and gently laid a hand on his shoulder. She explained Siddhartha was a book the crazy one was reading. It was on the bedside table. She also asked him to get Abigail to bring all her stockings in a paper bag. They would have to use them as a makeshift fan belt on the journey to Livingstone. Massively relieved, Jam put down the torches and did as he was requested. He was happy to see on his return that the truck had started and was answering to the deep plunging of its accelerator. There was black smoke everywhere. This led to some joyous ululating from the staff who had spontaneously gathered to form a farewell party. His relief was short-lived, though. Lily shifted sideways to make room for him and handed the torches back. “You,” s
he said, “are our headlights.”

  As the truck spluttered and jerked through the farm gate that had no fence on either side, Lily leaned over Jam and waved through the window. In the rear-view mirror, she watched the women dancing as they cradled imaginary babies in their arms. Dennis spotted his book on top of the dashboard and thanked Jam. “It’s made up of two Sanskrit words,” he said. “‘Siddha’, which means ‘achieved’, and ‘artha’, which means ‘what was searched for’, hence Siddhartha.” Stuck between the door and the lady who took up the space of two, all Jam could do was remove the window winder from his ribs and stare through the windscreen.

  The first fifty miles devoured a single stocking and an unfortunate jackal that inexplicably ran in the same direction as the swerving truck. The driver apologised profusely, although no one in the front seat quite knew to whom these sorrys were directed. Dennis was talking into the rear-view mirror as if it were a microphone. Perhaps he thought the jackal, which was embedded in both the front and rear wheels, had left a family behind. At the very time he was trying to add to his own bloodline, he was guilty of subtracting from another. To calm him down, Lily suggested a tea break.

  She thought it wouldn’t be wise for her to move, so while she sipped from the metal cup, Jam attempted to dislodge the jackal with a stick. He showed Dennis how it looked as though the rear wheel had grown a tail. Maybe it was the liquid, still hot in the stainless-steel flask, that caused the first contractions. Either way, the yelp from the cab caused both men to leave the tail where it was and run to the front of the truck. For fear of it not starting, the engine had been left running. Within seconds, they were on the road once more. Jam took the cup from Lily and screwed it onto the top of the flask. Lily, in turn, grabbed his thigh and dug her nails deep.

  Nightfall on the southern tip of Northern Rhodesia was not an even process. The light lingered and teased. Sometimes the fading glow even increased in intensity as it bounced off clouds or set the horizon on fire. And then it was gone. Like the flick of a switch, the dark was so deep you couldn’t see your hand in front of you. Dennis leaned forward as if getting closer to the windscreen would help. What road there was disappeared. They were boxed in black. He wound his window down, hoping the fresh air would somehow increase his visibility. Jam lifted Lily’s hand from his leg and switched a torch on.

  “Slow down.”

  “I’m only doing thirty.”

  “Slow down or you’ll crash.”

  While the husband-and-wife team argued in the cab, Jam stood on the runner board with a torch in his free hand. It served absolutely no practical purpose except, perhaps, to offer some erratic illumination to a vehicle coming in the opposite direction. On two occasions, cars veered out the way at the last moment as they realised the single bulb belonged to something larger than a bicycle. As the light bounced and swayed in every direction, Dennis prayed for the moon to finally break the tree line. Just over halfway, the contractions increased both in frequency and in intensity. As Jam’s thigh was out of reach, the ancient and seeping foam of the dashboard became the grip of choice. With fifty miles to go, stuffing lay all over the seat. The battery on the second torch was almost gone, yet Jam felt it was safer outside the vehicle. There was no room for him, anyway. Lily was now sprawled across the front seat with her head on the driver’s lap.

  They were saved by a full moon, a clear sky and a surprisingly large number of stockings for a farmer’s wife. By the time the tyres felt tar under their treads, the buildings on the outskirts of Livingstone cast clearly defined lunar shadows. Their arrival also heralded a huge gush of fluid onto the seat, then floor. Jam’s torches were long extinct, yet he still symbolically pointed one into the night and kept his eyes focused forward. Dennis defied all the neatly arrowed signs and the frantic waving of the night watchman as he parked in the rose garden at the entrance of the hospital. The high roof and wide turning circle of the truck would not allow a more sedate arrival under the neat canvas canopy. The good news was all this turmoil also produced the doctor on night duty. Dennis ran around to the passenger side and whipped open the door like some frantic presenter revealing the climax of his main act.

  “I see,” said the doctor, “most of my work is already done.”

  The next morning Dennis cleaned out the cab. Yellow tufts of sponge lay everywhere. He flattened a piece and made a bookmark out of it. And although he had since read Siddhartha many times, the pressed yellow strip always stayed on page thirty-three where the last paragraph was underlined in pen.

  At that moment, when the world around him melted away, when he stood alone like a star in the heavens, he was overwhelmed by a feeling of icy despair, but he was more firmly himself than ever. That was the last shudder of his awakening, the last pains of birth. Immediately he moved on again and began to walk quickly and impatiently, no longer homewards, no longer to his father, no longer looking backwards.

  5

  Avant-garde

  /av’an-gärd/ adjective, French

  It was the weekend, so Uncle Ed had left his cufflinks at home. He had, however, kept the double-breasted jacket and tucked a burgundy cravat where his tie would normally be. His unexpected arrival turned everything upside down. Already Phen’s mother had apologised twice for being caught in her apron. Further embarrassment had ensued by her not having anything to offer with the tea. The flat was a mess, the kitchen barely clean, and the passageway rug still hung over the balcony wall waiting for a beating.

  It was eleven thirty on Saturday morning and Edward was basking in the moment. He didn’t often cast himself in the role of unexpected guest. There were many words to describe him, but spontaneous was not one of them. You wouldn’t call him mischievous either, yet here he was, being positively coquettish. He crossed and uncrossed his legs like an impatient schoolboy, his coy, crooked smile creating a single dimple on the right side of his face. Unable to contain his excitement, he’d carelessly rubbed his head, leaving the normally smooth arc of his individual hairs crisscrossed and tangled.

  “You have to tell us, Edward.”

  “Not until Dennis wakes up.”

  “You’re such a devil.”

  It was strange to see a man who was an elder in the local Methodist church and lead baritone in their choir burst with such pride on being called Satan, thought Phen. Uncle Ed ran his finger around the back of his cravat as the temperature in the room suddenly rose. From beneath the table, Phen watched his uncle squeeze his own knee in an attempt to contain his enthusiasm. He’d chosen this vantage point because his Meccano set was on the floor anyway and, besides, it allowed him to feign disinterest. He also didn’t like the jovial and almost intimate chatter between the two of them. He preferred his uncle more subservient. He was a supporting actor, not the star of the show. He smashed the crane against the table leg and watched the wheel of the headgear roll under the sideboard.

  “Accident below?” asked Uncle Ed as if he was suddenly in charge. “Shall we send for the ambulance?”

  The epicentre of all the intrigue lay on top of the table in a large square cardboard box. That in turn was surrounded by wrapping paper that designated neither a birthday nor Christmas. Phen decided it was happy-nothing paper. Tiny stars streaked out of a toy trumpet and burst against a blue sky like some feeble Tinkerbell Guy Fawkes. Silly yellow birds with large, wide eyes gawked in amazement. One of them was so stunned it covered its beak and face with its wing. What annoyed Phen even more was the weight didn’t match the frivolous paper. He’d seen its heaviness had lopsided his uncle’s shoulders and he’d needed two hands to place it gently on the table.

  Whatever was in the box, its importance grew as they waited for his father to stir. This led to a second cup of tea and a “poor rescue act” of four dry Marie biscuits served on a side plate. Phen reached for one, but was stopped by his mother’s glare and arched eyebrow. “Visitors first.” The stupidity of the moment was compounded by Uncle Ed declining. To punish his mother he was forced to refu
se her second-round offer. The box was causing problems and it hadn’t even been opened yet.

  “I’m sorry,” his mother said. “It was a bad night, had to give him morphine.”

  “Migraine?”

  “Yes, and battling to breathe.”

  From under the tablecloth Phen watched his mother surreptitiously point at him, then place her finger on her lips. Uncle Ed nodded.

  “Well, I’m sure he’ll be much better when he wakes.”

  As if on cue they heard the clink of the water jug, and the bedside lamp being switched on.

  “His Lordship arises.”

  The routine was always the same after morphine or pethidine. His mother would go in first to “make the room safe”. She was never sure what she’d find behind the closed door. Often she’d discover his body as she’d left it, lying on its back with both sleeves still forced above his bony elbows, her amateur needlework on full display. The black and purple bruises spreading like continents across his forearms. “Africa,” he’d once said, staring at his veined atlas. “You’ve even got the Blue Nile in the right place.” If he was drowsy or being teased with nausea, she knew he had to be coaxed back, gently persuaded to fully return. There were whispers of hot tea, warm baths and did he know “Test the Team” would be on the radio tonight? Could she open the curtain just half an inch? It was a beautiful day, could she let it in?

  On other days the opioid worked a fuller magic. The body would be sitting upright, the pillows already stacked, throne-like, and the pyjamas neatly buttoned from collar to cuff. As the door opened, there would often be a request for a dance. On hearing that her card was full, he’d mischievously stroke his imaginary pencil moustache. He was taking the yacht down to Antibes tomorrow – would she care to join him? Only if she could bring her mother along too, was the usual reply. Perhaps the Moulin Rouge later in the week, then? Perhaps.