Jane Gardam - Last Friends

There was a cough above him on the high dune.

Turning round, Terry saw the insect-man in an old suit and a bowler hat. The pram hung in front of him, two wheels deep in fine sand that flowed in spreading avalanches down the slope.

‘Good afternoon,’ said the man. ‘Parable-Apse.’

Terry stared.

‘And Apse,’ he said. ‘Parable, Apse and Apse; Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths.’

Terry stared on.

‘My name is Peter Parable, senior partner, and you I believe to be Florrie Benson’s boy? I was briefly at school with your mother. I am being obliged to ask for your help.’

Terry’s Russian eyes watched on.

‘I am a man of principle,’ said the creature. ‘I am not in the least interested in children. I am not of a perverted disposition. I am able to survive without entanglements and I ask only your immediate assistance in conducting the pram down to the harder level below this dune. Today I have attempted a different route home. It has not been a success.’

The pram was up to its axles in sand.

‘When I lean with all my might,’ said the tiny man, ‘you may assist by tugging at the back wheels, those nearest you. And then if you could sharply— sharply —spring to the side I think the vehicle might achieve the beach in an upright position and of its own volition.’

Terry sat a minute considering this new language and then plodded up the dune. He kicked the rear of the pram facing him with a nonchalance close to insolence. Close to hatred. Bloody man.

He soon stopped kicking. He tried to heave the pram upwards in his arms. He said, ‘It’s not going to shift. Is’t full o’ lead? What you got in’t?’

‘Black gold,’ said Parable-Apse. ‘Black diamonds. Tiny black — and white — pearls. Now then — again!’

After at least seven heaves Terry yelled and fell to the ground, rolled sideways and watched the pram lumbering and slithering down the slope to tip over on its side upon the beach. A heap of gravelly dirt spilled over the silken sand. Using a shovel as a walking stick Mr. Parable (or Apse) toddled after it, legs far apart, and Terry sat up.

‘We have, I fear, a weakened axle,’ said the insect-man.

‘You’ll have to leave it ’ere,’ said Terry.

‘Oh, it hasn’t come to that. Perhaps we should empty it completely, scatter the load with simple sand and, later, return.’

Terry regarded the heap of dirt.

‘And if, boy, you would carry the broken wheel and we were to push the rest of it home, then you could take tea with me.’

Terry thought, Here we go and said, ‘Is’t far?’

‘Not at all.’ The man was busy covering up the mound of black gold, scratching the last of the dirt from the pram. He snapped off the damaged wheel, handed it to the boy and fell flat on his face.

‘Oh, God,’ said Terry, hauling him up. ‘’ere. Gis ’ere. Give over. Tek’t wheel. Where we goin’?’

They paraded over the sandy path behind the dunes, across the golf-links, somehow got themselves over a wooden stile watched by a lonely yellow house with empty windows. They followed a track that put them out into a street of squat one-storey houses Terry had not seen before, the long, low street of the old fishing village built before the industries came, before the ironstone chimney and the foreign workers and the chemicals and the flames. The sandstone dwellings had midget doors and windows like houses for elves. Mr. Parable-Apse, Commissioner for Oaths, let them both in to one of these houses, leaving the pram outside, and inside they walked down a long, low tunnel of a rabbit-warren-like passage-way into a kitchen scrubbed clean. Some of Mr. Parable-Apse’s under-clothing hung airing from a contraption of ropes and wooden bars overhead. He lit a hazy, beautiful gas-light on a bracket, crossed to the coal fire, flourished a poker and flung a shovelful of glittering, hard dirt, like jet, into the flames. The coal fire in the grate blazed up, hot and brilliant.

‘What is’t?’ asked Terry.

‘Sea-coal. Washed , of course. I wash it in a bath in my yard several times a week. Out of office hours of course, and never on the Lord’s Day. In my back yard I have a pump with clear, unbounded water that cleanses like the mercy of God. The sea-coal’s what washes off the ships, you know. In the estuary. Sea-coal is a bonus. Clean and beautiful, sweet-smelling, effective and free . Your mother should market it.’

‘She has enough to do,’ said Terry.

‘So I hear. But you haven’t yet, my boy. I expect you are meant to leave school shortly and slave at The Works? Oh, my dear boy! Sweeping a road ’til the end of your life.’

‘They need the money.’

‘You could begin now, working casually for me. While you are waiting. I make money. I have never had any difficulty there. We could expand across this world. Apse and Benson. In the name of the Lord, of course.’

Apse, Benson and God, thought Terry. He said, ‘But I’ll have to go full time to The Works. For the money.’

Apse — or Parable — was washing his hands at the shallow stone sink, drying carefully between his fingers.

‘How old did you say? Ah yes. I remember the visit of the Cossacks to the Gas Works though, of course, I was unable to attend. A circus is one of the devil’s plays. There is a rumour abroad — tell me, what is your name? — that you are particularly clever. Your intelligence is above these parts. You might bring your intelligence to us. Come in with me as a lawyer. It could be arranged. It is called ‘Doing your articles’—a ridiculous and medieval concept — but a solicitor’s work is the top of the world.’

(‘This man’s a loony!’)

‘And even now,’ said Parable-Apse, ‘Think of Christian commerce. Sea-coal. It is your family business.’

‘You shut up,’ said Terry. ‘Stop looking down on my mother.’

‘Oh never! Never! Known her since she was born. Since her mother put her in long drawers. I loved her.’

‘My Dad loves her and nowt to do wi’ frills. They don’t speak now, me Dad and Mam, but it’s only because of his shame. Shame at being crippled and nobody caring. And being lost.’

‘He talks to you?’

‘Nay — never! We’s beyond talk. We talk his language together less and less. He grabs me wrist as I pass the bed. Like a torturer but it’s himself ’e’s torturing.’

‘Why does he do that?’

‘There’s always money under his fingers. Tight up in the palm. He needs whisky. The Mam don’t know. Nurse Watkins does. She’s foreign, too. He pushes the bottle under his mattress. When it’s empty. I’ve seen it going home in her leather bag with the washing. The money must come from the Holy Father. How do I know? He’s beginning to need more and more.’

He was dizzy with revelation. Revelation even to himself. None of this had emerged as words before. Not even thoughts.

‘A man comes,’ said Terry. ‘Mam don’t know. A foreign man. Talking Russian — or summat like it. When nobody’s in.’ He burst into tears. ‘Maybe I dream it.’

Parable-Apse, having dried his coal-dusted hands on a clean tea-towel, sat down by the sea-coal fire and speared a tea-cake on the end of a brass toasting fork. The medallion on the toasting fork was some sort of jack-ass or demon, or sunburst god. ‘How wonderful the world is,’ said Parable-Apse.

The fire blazed bright and the tea-cake toasted.

‘We must get him vodka,’ said Parable-Apse. ‘It does not taint the breath. Goodbye. It is more than time you went home. Take the tea-cake with you. I will butter it. I shall expect you to relish it.’

On the doorstep Terry heard him bolting the door on the inside. They sounded like the bolts of a strong-room. ‘Loopy,’ he thought. ‘Silly old stick.’