Alison Moore - He Wants

‘You’ve got more than twenty,’ says Sydney. ‘You know when you’ve got an itch, and you have a sense of time, and pain, and hunger…’

Lewis looks at him, astonished to find that he has gone through life thinking that he only had five, the basic five senses, when all along he had more than twenty. Aware now of his embarrassment of senses, Lewis pictures himself like the sensory homunculus, a man with grossly enlarged lips and tongue and genitals, and the most enormous hands. Thinking about whether he’s got an itch makes him feel that he has.

At the end of the lane, they come to what was once countryside but is now all built up, housing estates extending over what used to be fields. Lewis is on the point of saying to Sydney, ‘Do you remember when this was all fields?’ but he doesn’t want to sound like an old man, he doesn’t want to sound like his own father, so he doesn’t say anything.

And then, coasting down the final hill, the figure on the dashboard performing a wild hula on the rough track, they emerge into Nether, into the village square. Sydney starts to slow down. They approach the café and Lewis peers towards it. Despite all that bread he ate, all that fibre, he thinks he might be peckish. He has never been into that café, whose door, the frame, is the yellow of a sunny-side-up egg, the same shade as a sign he’s seen, strapped to a lamppost on the main road, that says, ‘Better late than never’. He thinks about all the things they might sell in there, imagining all sorts of goodies he has never had: cappuccinos, espressos, carrot cake. Sydney is not stopping at the café though, and, besides, it looks as if it is on the point of closing.

They skirt the green, the bench standing empty in the middle, and Lewis looks at the blossom on the winter-flowering trees and, on the other side of the road, the rows of little stone cottages with neat, square gardens and window boxes. It is a nice village, he thinks; it would be a pleasant place to live, were it not for Barry Bolton.

Sydney pulls up outside the house that is still bare-bricked between its clad neighbours. Lewis half expects to see Sydney’s father in the front garden or at the front window, shooing him away.

‘There’s no one here,’ says Sydney, and Lewis is not sure whether he means his parents or Barry Bolton.

They get out and let the dog out too.

There are all sorts of parking restrictions in town and even in Lewis’s village now — bays that you are not allowed to park in, entire streets that are for permit holders only. He does not know about here. Lewis has never parked somewhere he shouldn’t; he has never had a parking ticket tucked under his windscreen wiper. He has never had a speeding ticket or been stopped by the police and given a verbal warning. When he was at school, other boys were given warnings and final warnings by police officers and park keepers, but such things never happened to Lewis. He did get that letter though, recently, about spending too long in the car park of the supermarket on Small Street. He would like to go back to the playground, to say to the boys, when they boast about the trouble they’ve been in, that he has had a letter threatening him with court. He ought to have kept the letter as proof that he parked for much longer than was allowed.

In truth, though, he was mortified to receive that letter. The experience was quite unpleasant and he hopes that he has heard the last of it. He paid the fine promptly. The moment the letter came through the door, he wrote a cheque, put a first-class stamp on the envelope and took it straight down to the postbox. He put the threatening letter, with its assertion of video evidence and the scales of justice in the corner, into the recycling, feeling the sweat in his armpits, on his clean shirt. He made a cup of tea to help himself calm down.

‘Cup of tea?’ says Sydney, as if, thinks Lewis, briefly alarmed, Sydney can see right into his head, as if he can see what Lewis thinks about.

‘Not for me, thank you,’ he says — he does not normally have caffeine this late, so close to bedtime — but Sydney is already walking away with the dog at his heels. Lewis cuts across the front garden. Seeing his own slippered feet nipping across the lawn, he feels like an escapee, like one of the residents getting out of the nursing home in the middle of the night. He follows Sydney down the side of the house and in through the kitchen door.

EVEN WITHOUT HIS glasses on, Lewis can see that the units in Sydney’s kitchen are the originals. The fixtures and fittings, the table and chairs and the lino floor tiles must be as old as he is. He wants to say to Edie, ‘Look, this kitchen is older than ours and is just fine.’ But it is years since Edie won that argument, years since they had their new units put in, their new floor laid.

‘What do you want?’ asks Sydney, opening cupboards, offering cocoa, Horlicks, Ribena, but Lewis says no, no — he does not want any of these things.

Sydney, with hands still dirty from lying on the ground being kicked by Barry Bolton, fills the kettle and opens a cupboard. Looking for teabags, he finds Marmite that is years past its sell-by date and a jar of pickled beetroot gone brown and soft and falling apart. ‘I didn’t think these things ever went off,’ he says, opening the pedal bin to dispose of these expired products and finding it stuffed full. ‘Empty the bin,’ says Sydney. If Sydney were Ruth’s boy, Lewis would say, ‘ Please. Please empty the bin.’ When he does this, he sounds as if he is begging, pleading with him. ‘ Please ,’ he says as he stands there holding the last biscuit just out of the boy’s reach, ‘I want it, please .’

Lewis reaches down, knots the top of the bin liner and lifts it out. Taking the rubbish to the back door, he steps outside and makes his way to the wheely bin. It is, in that moment, as if he lives here, as if he lives here with Sydney, like the Odd Couple: Lewis puts the rubbish out while Sydney makes the tea.

His daydream is interrupted by the sound of breaking glass. It came from the street. He can’t tell how close it was. He can hear children laughing and running.

Lewis lifts the lid of the wheely bin, to put the rubbish safely inside, but he finds the bin full to the brim. He has to leave the lid gaping, the bin bag exposed, balanced; it will be got at by foxes, which will tear it open.

He returns to the kitchen, where Sydney, having found what he needs, is making the tea, making a cup for Lewis as well. Sydney adds three sugars to his, and Lewis thinks of Ruth’s boy, who asks for sugar sandwiches and leaves the licked bread on his plate, who wants jelly for breakfast and sweets while his mother is cooking the dinner and pink syrup in his bedtime milk. Lewis imagines the cavities that might already be forming in the boy’s baby teeth.

The boy starts sentences with, ‘I want,’ before knowing what it is he really wants. ‘I want,’ he says, ‘I want, I want, I want…’ Even at night, in his sleep, the boy calls out, ‘I want it!’ and, ‘Give it to me!’

Lewis does not want the boy to be spoiled.

They drink their tea sitting on the doorstep, eyeing the night. The children seem to have disappeared and it is quiet now. Sydney takes out his electronic cigarette and Lewis asks after his parents. ‘My mum’s long gone,’ says Sydney. ‘My dad died recently, after a fall.’

‘Were you there?’ asks Lewis.

Sydney shakes his head. Finishing his tea, he gets to his feet and goes inside. Lewis follows him.

‘Come through,’ says Sydney, treading on the heels of his trainers to take them off. He’ll ruin them, thinks Lewis, watching him. Lewis leaves his slippers on because his feet are cold.