Katherine Bucknell - What You Will

Will had a stacking top: five individual tops which could be made to spin as one if they were wound up and dropped in precisely the right way – accurately, quickly – before any of them stopped spinning. One by one, hosts and guests got down on the floor, giggling, absorbed. Nobody could get beyond three tops piled up and spinning at once – until they started helping each other out. Gwen was fastest at winding the tops, but Will had the surest touch for stacking them. The little group fell silent when mother and son got four of the tops going together. Then Will, his heavily lashed green eyes hooded and still, dropped the last tiny top on the whirling stack. The sharp point of the big, fat top at the bottom buzzed loudly like a little drill against the polished wood as the stack leaned ever so slightly and began to inscribe a slow hard arc across the floor, moving faster, becoming more and more unstable, alarmingly angled. At last it shot under the kitchen table, struck one of the legs and blew apart.

A deflationary ‘Oh …’ seeped from them all, the air going out of their game.

Then Hilary cried out, ‘Look, they’re still going!’

‘Cool!’ squeaked Will. Because three of the tops had landed upright and went on spinning separately, moving freely over the floor.

‘Centripetal force,’ Roland observed in his deep, imperturbable voice.

‘Dead cool,’ Gwen said, smiling, rising to her feet. ‘We can do it all again tomorrow. Time for bed.’

She made no move to enforce this, but walked away to the stove, stuck a fork into the potatoes to see if they were cooked, then hefted them from the burner to the sink and poured the boiling water away.

Will grabbed up his tops, which were wobbling now as they spun themselves out, and took them to his father. ‘Daddy, will you wind them up one more time? Pu-leeeze?’

And so Lawrence did, and the game began again, but with more tension now that bedtime was looming; everyone’s hands were stiff and unsuccessful with it. The tops racketed crazily around the room, under the chairs, under the table, and Will fired the smaller ones carelessly at the bigger ones like bombs, laughing hilariously until he collapsed on the floor. His five-year-old stomach and its irresistible plughole of a belly button bulged unguarded where his striped pyjamas separated at the waist, and he was made the victim of a tough tickle from his father’s big, relentless fingers, until he was overcome, and screamed, ‘Stop, stop.’ His legs kicked ferociously as he lay on his back; his arms flailed and swatted.

Lawrence stopped.

Then Will screamed, ‘Do it again! Do it again!’ tears showing along the corners of his grin.

Gwen slipped the fish into the simmering pan and replaced the long lid. ‘C’mon, you guys. Bed.’

As Gwen moved with Will towards the door, Hilary said, ‘I could read Will a story?’

‘Do you want to?’ Gwen turned, grateful.

‘While you do the fish?’

‘The fish is OK, actually,’ said Gwen. ‘It has to cook for a few minutes.’

Will said, ‘I want Mummy to read me the story.’ He took hold of Gwen’s hand.

‘It’s going to be a short one, Will, since we’re having dinner.’

‘Two short ones?’ he said engagingly.

‘I can do the fish,’ said Lawrence. ‘And I’ll send Hilary to you in ten minutes if you haven’t reappeared. Don’t worry, darling.’

‘The spinach soufflé is in the oven. Keep an eye on it.’ Gwen had a foot on the bottom step.

‘G’night, Daddy,’ said Will, tipping a half-cupped palm in the air, a stilted wave, suddenly shy.

‘Night.’

The group in the kitchen, milling awkwardly around the table and the stove, turned back to the subject Roland had raised with Lawrence during their drive from Oxford to London – the question of whether Lawrence should be taking so much time from his big book on Greek and Roman slavery to be pursuing what Roland reckoned was a pretty tenuous connection between the Satyricon and Les Misérables .

Roland sidled up to Hilary, winking, conspiratorial. ‘I’ve been warning Lawrence off trying to be popular. He’s brewing up a scholarly piece on Les Mis . You must have seen Les Mis ? Everyone has.’

‘ Les Mis ?’ she said, round-eyed. ‘The musical? I – well – I read the novel, years ago. But I don’t know any of the songs.’

‘You needn’t know the tunes,’ Lawrence assured her, tearing brown paper off a round, crusty loaf of bread. ‘Roland’s faking. You haven’t seen it, Roland. Own up.’

Roland’s chin shot out; his face reddened.

In the burning silence that ensued, Lawrence opened his case, with a kind of polite indifference, to put Hilary at her ease. ‘You remember the convict, Hilary? Jean Valjean? Tries to steal a loaf of bread – just like this,’ and he whacked the bread down on a wooden cutting board by the sink. ‘For this audacious, antisocial crime, he is sentenced to five years’ hard labour.’ Lawrence crumpled the paper showily with one hand and tossed it into the bin which stood lidless nearby. ‘He begins his sentence in tears with an iron collar riveted on around his neck. Might as well be a slave, you see? Just my sort of thing.’

Hilary was silent, eyes on the floor, conscious that Roland was watching her, and that she hadn’t responded to his opening gambit in the way he had evidently hoped she might. That she had failed even to recognise it as an opening gambit. She felt herself being caught up in somebody else’s argument, and she didn’t want to reveal sympathy for either side. Lawrence is only trying to be kind to me – that’s what she would have liked to say to Roland – he wouldn’t sideline his own friend on purpose.

Lawrence went on, gently but tenaciously, with his performance. It was irresistible to him to try to capture whatever youthful, feminine attention was in a room. ‘When he is eventually freed, the convict soon steals again.’ He reached for a bread knife, unsheathing it from the wooden knife block with a dangerous flourish, high in the air, eyes aglow. ‘But this time he steals from a bishop who has the power to free him physically and spiritually – by forgiving him. And as a sign of his forgiveness, the bishop gives the convict two silver candlesticks.’

Hilary looked up almost involuntarily and said, ‘I remember that.’

Lawrence cut into the bread with energy, the toothed blade scoring loudly through the crust and sinking into the doughy middle, rasping and biting all the way down to the powdery surface of the well-hacked board. He cut another slice, then stopped and looked about the room as if he had forgotten something. He spotted a pair of pewter candlesticks on the Welsh dresser, walked across and collected them with a package of long white tapers from a shelf above, and set them at the centre of the table among the place settings. ‘Perfect,’ he said, spreading his palms in the air over it all and smiling with satisfaction. ‘Maybe you’d put in the candles?’ he asked, handing them to Hilary.

‘You’re an atheist, Lawrence; surely Hugo was not,’ Roland grumbled. And he stalked off a few paces to sit down by himself on the sofa.

Lawrence ignored him, still smiling. He lifted the lid of the poaching pan ever so slightly with the corner of a spatula, looked at his watch. Then he began opening and shutting drawers, hunting. ‘Jean Valjean keeps the bishop’s candlesticks, despite the risk that they will eventually reveal his criminal past, just as Trimalchio – you know the Satyricon too, I suppose, Hilary? Being a classicist?’

Hilary looked guiltily towards Roland, then back towards Lawrence who was snatching and slamming at the drawers, rattling spoons, flaunting dish cloths, all the artillery of his domestic power. She fiddled with the package of candles, finding a way in through the cellophane, and nodded reluctantly, curious in spite of herself.