Pat Barker - Another World

As Geordie struggles to stand up, the front of his pyjama trousers gapes open, revealing a shrivelled cock, a dangling and wrinkled scrotum. Miranda blinks, but only once, and then she’s helping Frieda wrap the dressing-gown round him, and offering her shoulder for him to lean on. But he prefers Nick’s shoulder, he’s tottery on his feet, needs more support than an old woman or a young girl can give. ‘Bloody rations are late again,’ he mutters, as they limp out of the room together. Or does he? A second later Nick isn’t sure that this is what he heard. Probably not, since a second later Geordie makes, through the half-closed door of the lavatory, a disparaging comment on the England middle-order collapse.

The sight of Geordie’s genitals disturbs him. It’s not merely awkwardness about Miranda’s presence, it’s the speculation he doesn’t want to have to entertain about what form sexuality might take in that inconceivably frail, and dauntless, body. How do you reconcile yourself to that loss? Sophocles was relieved. ‘Like freedom after a life spent in bondage to a cruel master.’ Sophocles was seventy. At seventy-eight Geordie had started an affair with Norah Atkinson, the widow of an insurance agent, a woman whose opulent bosom was frequently sheathed in Bri-nylon leopard skin. At home she’d gone down every bit as well as tea in saucers. Nick feels obscurely cheered by the thought of Grandad’s 78-year-old cavortings. He starts to think how much longer his grandfather has had than his father, how much longer he’s had than he might have had. Lucky to survive the bayonet wound. But even without that — Loos, the Somme, Passchendaele — the odds must always have been stacked high against his reaching twenty.

So Nick helps Geordie back into the living room feeling rather cheerful about the prospect of mortality, at least as it affected somebody else. Geordie too seems cheerful, doesn’t talk much, perhaps, but the few comments he does make show he’s following the conversation. As it grows dusk he remarks that the nights are drawing in. Part of him likes winter evenings, he likes coming in to a good fire. All the same he’ll be glad when next summer comes. He dreads the ice and frost of January and February, and his tone of voice reveals no doubt that these are difficulties he expects to contend with. It’s impossible to tell what he believes. They don’t mention how ill he is. Perhaps he takes his cue from them and thinks he isn’t? Equally likely he colludes with them for their sakes, the last dreadful courtesy the dying extend to the living. He can’t last a month, Nick thinks, but he’s no idea, really, how long a man of Geordie’s formidable willpower might survive. At any rate it pleases him to see the old man with Miranda. He strokes her forearm, as if marvelling at the smooth flesh, and seems to take comfort from the contact. This is his great-granddaughter. He won’t live to see her grow up, but he’s lived long enough already to see the woman she will become clearly visible in the child.

After tea’s cleared away and washed up, Nick takes Frieda to one side and asks if she wants him to come back that night. She hesitates, but he can see she’s tired. ‘I’ll just take Miranda home,’ he says. ‘And then I’ll be back.’

He rings Fran, but there’s nobody there. Slightly puzzled — they ought to be back by now, Fran hates driving through the rush hour — he lets the phone go on ringing and ringing in the empty house, until finally the answering machine clicks on, and his own voice invites him to leave a message after the tone.

‘Nobody in,’ he says, going back into the living room to say goodbye.

Fran’s car is so hot she has to open all the windows to cool it down before they can get in. She swings one door to and fro out of a vague feeling that this will help. Jasper’s trying to throw handfuls of gravel, but his coordination’s so poor he topples over and lands on his bottom. One whimper, and he’s on his feet again, this time throwing the gravel at Gareth, who thumps him on the arm.

‘Gareth!’

‘He started it.’

‘He’s just a baby, he doesn’t understand.’

‘He started it.’

‘Just get in, will you?’

Gareth sits in the front passenger seat.

‘Not there. In the back.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s the law. You’re not allowed in the front till you’re twelve.’

‘Nick lets Miranda.’

‘Miranda’s thirteen.’

‘I’m nearly twelve.’

‘And when you are twelve then you can sit in the front.’

Gareth gets in the back. Fran’s not inclined to congratulate herself. In dealing with Gareth, there’s nothing more ominous than a small, early victory.

Jasper, who hates the hot plastic car seat, stiffens his legs till they’re like planks. Fran, holding a heavy toddler at arm’s length, back aching, stomach getting in the way of everything, pendulous breasts each with a swamp of sweat underneath, thinks, This is stupid. She stops, lets Jasper get out, and plays with him for a while, pretendy chases and tickling and incey-wincey-spider-climbed-up-the-spout, then when he’s curled up and helpless with giggles she slips him quickly into the seat and clicks the buckle. He opens his mouth to scream, but she crashes the gears, turns the radio on full blast, starts to sing ‘Incey Wincey Spider’ at the top of her voice, until Jasper, bowling along the open road, breath snatched out of his mouth, deafened by the noise, forgets what he’s crying about, and points at the shadows of leaves flickering across the roof. ‘’Ook, ’ook.’

‘Yeah,’ says Gareth sourly. ‘’Ook.’

Fran slips one hand into her blouse and surreptitiously rubs the sweat, flaps the cotton, does what she can to dry off. When she was a girl — back in the middle Jurassic — she’d been one of the last in her class to hold a pencil under them. Get pencil cases in there now. Be a pencil factory soon if she doesn’t do something about this bloody saggy bra. ‘Look, Gareth,’ she says, trying to keep the lines of communication open. ‘There’s your new school.’

And why the fuck would anybody want to look at that? Gareth thinks.

But look at it he does. It’s empty now, of course, the middle of August, a long, low huddle of buildings, one of them with its windows boarded up, because last winter the pipes burst and flooded the labs and there’s no money to get them repaired. Though Digger says it wasn’t burst pipes, it was his brother Paul and a gang of lads broke in and left the taps running. Gareth doesn’t know whether to believe him or not.

He’s dreading it. At his last school he knew all the places you could hide. Behind the fire escape, in the caretaker’s cupboard, out on the flat roof, in the bogs. Gareth can make a pee last fifty minutes if he has to. And he knew all the boys. Who was hard, who wasn’t, which of the girls was hard enough to take on nearly all the lads. Joanna Martin could take on everybody in 6M except Darryl Davies. There are 1,500 kids in the new school. He can’t even imagine what it would look like, if they were all in a room together. Not that they ever are. You don’t have assemblies in the big school. Instead every morning there’s Family Groups, big kids, grown-ups, little kids all mixed up together. Like in families. It’s supposed to make you feel safe and if Jasper doesn’t stop saying ‘’Ook!’ soon he’s going to strangle the little fucker.

None of it would matter if him and Digger were still mates, because apart from anything else Paul always looked out for Digger — he might kick his head in, but he wouldn’t let anybody else do it — only Digger hung round with Darryl and them now. When September comes nobody’ll call for him. He’ll have to walk up that drive on his own.