Graham Swift - Shuttlecock

Almost the first thing I said when I got in was: ‘Where’s Martin?’

‘He went out.’

‘Where?’

‘He just said “out”.’

Marian was washing lettuce for a salad and she said nothing more and scarcely looked up. I have noticed she is getting like this of late. Quieter, shrinking, far-off. More and more thrifty with her words, as she is becoming, in bed, more and more thrifty with her body.

‘You mean you just let him wander off and you haven’t a clue where he’s going?’

Peter came down the stairs from his bedroom. I am still trying to work out whether he was in on the business of Dad’s book. He has a way now, when I get in from work, of coming dutifully to the front door and saying mechanically, ‘Hello, Dad.’ But there is this anxious, timid look in his face which, until very recently, both pleased me and puzzled me. I’ve arrived at the explanation now. It’s not that he’s in awe of me. Not at all. But he’s in awe of his brother. Whether he was an accomplice to it or not, he’s impressed by Martin’s daring, and for the first time in his little life he is feeling the onus of something to live up to. He wonders if he could do what Martin did, if he could be so bold. It’s a strange thing how your own kids suddenly start to reveal to you the implicit shape of their lives. If Martin will take after his grandfather, Peter will take after me. Poor mite. Already, in these few weeks, Martin’s face seems to have become firmly moulded; Peter’s is soft and elusive.

‘Hello, Peter. Know where Martin is?’

His eyes sharpen. Of course, all my theories could be wrong.

Then I said, to both of them: ‘Well, didn’t he say when he’d be back?’

They looked at me without speaking, as if they had detected some tell-tale symptom in my behaviour.

Then it almost seemed that a cloud passed over my eyes. Supposing they’re all in it, all together? Quinn and Martin and Marian and Peter?

There is nothing to stop me making inquiries of my own. In fact there is every facility to assist me. I have only to procure the standard forms and covering letters from the office and send them to the right addresses. Such requests for information, of course, should really be authorized and signed by Quinn, but it is ten-to-one in my favour that, given the obtuseness of bureaucracy, they will be taken in by the official documents and not query my own signature. I know where the forms are kept. How many times have I filled up at Quinn’s behest these formidable sheets of paper headed sternly ‘STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL’? In fact, only now does it strike me — perhaps I am a naïve and simple-minded creature, after all — what opportunities exist for such as I for delving into untold privacies, for obtaining almost unlimited access into the darker byways of other people’s lives. All I have to do is to pick out the forms, draft my request — ‘Details of the personal histories of X and Z prior to their employment in H.M. service’ — have it typed — not by Quinn’s secretary, I will ask Maureen, who won’t be aware of what she is doing — and have it franked and despatched. The only risk is if Quinn or any of my colleagues catches me at it. I will have to choose some time when the office is quiet. Not at night, after normal hours. Quinn will be working late too. That is the one time when I will look most suspicious. At lunch-time perhaps. Or, better still, early in the morning. Quinn himself rarely appears before half past nine, and I can invent some pretext for the office messengers to let me in before eight. I can have everything done by nine and then take it through to the typing pool with a batch of routine items later in the day.

And if my correspondents at the Home Office don’t fail me, if they don’t hesitate to give information they must already have imparted once, then I shall have it both ways. I shall know, a little at least, of what is in File E, without having to challenge Quinn for it. And if I discover something he is trying to hide — then, I shall be able to challenge him.

‘Martin wants to know’ (it’s two days later, a Thursday: Marian and I are in bed) ‘why you went to work at a different time today.’

‘Oh? What’s that to him?’

‘You had breakfast by yourself and went in early, and then you were home about five.’

‘I know.’

‘Martin thinks you’re avoiding him.’

So — he was waiting again for me on the common — but I was early.

‘Look, has Martin said anything about coming to meet me at the station?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Nothing. I thought I saw him a couple of times, coming home.’

‘You flatter yourself. Coming to meet you at the station.’

Marian is lying with her back towards me. Her voice comes to me as if from behind a wall.

‘I don’t see why he shouldn’t from time to time.’

‘Come to think of it, why did you go into work early?’

Marian turns to face me. As she turns, her small breasts turn with her, like another pair of fleshy eyes. We are naked — just for the heat. We haven’t made love for some time now. We seem to have put away our sexual play-kit.

‘I had some extra work to do. I’ve gone in early before, haven’t I?’

‘But you’ve always told me. I didn’t know you weren’t going to have breakfast.’

Marian’s eyes suddenly become limpid and soulful (is that such a dreadful thing — missing breakfast?).

‘You don’t tell me anything these days.’

I thought: Now is the time I could tell her. Marian, I am going to be promoted.

‘It was only for today. I’ll go in at the usual time tomorrow.’

‘You might have told me.’ She frowns. ‘What was this extra work anyway?’

‘Look — enough of all these questions.’ My voice goes up a pitch. For a moment there’s almost a danger of it cracking guiltily. Why should she ask that?

‘Sorry. I only thought —’

She bites her lip. Her eyes are still wide and dreamily fixed on me, but as she looks it is as though she is drifting away. Some anaesthetic is clouding her vision and she can no longer recognize me. I think of Martin turning his back, on the common.

I move towards her and put my hand over her navel. She sighs audibly and goes passive and limp, though, in a way, this is just the same as her body going hard and impenetrable. I run my hand over her as if over some unfamiliar object. Things will go no further; but then I’m not moved by desire so much as by some sense of dreadful loneliness. My wife is afraid of me, she does not know me. I draw closer and put my mouth to her breast (unresisting, unprotected) and very gently peck her nipples.

‘It was only for today. You can tell Martin that if you like … Marian?’

And sure enough, I saw him, tonight (Friday), under the trees, the other side of the bowling green, as I passed. What does he want? All right, so he has seen me, that first time, for what I really am. And he knows that this figure who walks manfully by, for his benefit, and the benefit of who knows what other hidden observers, is no more than a puppet. And he knows that I know he knows that. What more does he want? All right, so he is nearly eleven years old and finding his strength, and I am three times his age and wondering where I mislaid mine; hoping to be propped up by some promotion. All right, I am the one to blame. Does he want me to confess as much to his face? To get down on my knees?

Tonight I stepped off the pavement and walked towards him over the grass. He had already turned and moved off as he saw me change course. He quickened his pace, intuitively, without looking back, as I quickened mine. This was like one of those dreams in which you try to reach the ones you love but you can’t. They’d cut the grass on that part of the common, and hanging in the air was the sweet, sappy smell that makes you know it’s summer. ‘Martin!’ I called. And I wanted to add: ‘Don’t go. Please. I’m sorry.’ Then, when my longer stride began to tell on him, he broke into a run. He ran towards the zebra-crossing on the South Circular Road. The South Circular Road divides one part of the common from the other; on the far side is the duck pond. I remembered the time when the boys were younger but just old enough to go out by themselves, and we lived in dread of their little bodies being smashed by cars. I started to run too but stopped almost at once, suddenly aware of appearing foolish. I wasn’t going to go chasing after my own son.