The Talking Head
Amy’s bare legs scrape against the wall. The sun is hot on her back although it is late September. She pushes her toes between the stones and shirts higher on her elbows so she can see right over. The apples have fallen from their tree and are lying all over the Ellis’ lawn. Mrs Ellis won’t bother to pick them up (‘Susan Ellis wouldn’t know what to do with a windfall apple if it got up and bit her,’ says Mum, deeply disapproving. ‘Tinned apple pie filling is more in her line!’)
Amy shirts her toes and wonders it she dare climb Over. There is no-one in the Ellis’ garden and the curtains are still drawn in their sitting-room. The fishpond shines ridiculously blue in the middle of the lawn.. There are irises and clumps of reed planted round the edge to cover the join, but it still looks raw.. The soil that came out of the hole is piled at the far end of the pond. Mr Ellis has planted two little conifers on it; their labels swing in the wind. Some rockery plants huddle under random stones.
Amy watched them all winter digging the hole for the pond. Mr Ellis kept trying to get Peter to help him - he was the sort of man who didn’t want to look as if he was giving orders, but wanted people to do what he said just the same. He shouted a lot and tried to make it sound like a joke.
‘Just another six inches, son, put your back into it!’
‘Isn’t it deep enough, Dad?’
‘Had enough, lad? Giving up on me?’ shouted Mr Ellis. ‘Want to make a good job of it, don’t we?’
The blue fibreglass shell had been propped against the shed since Christmas while they dug out the hole.
‘Slow and steady wins the race!’ shouted Mr Ellis, and ‘No good spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar!’ He said things like that with great conviction as it he had just thought of them. You could be sure if you met him in the autumn he’d tell you the nights were drawing in, and if you met him in June he would say ‘Flaming June!’ And at any time, if it was raining, he would say ‘Lovely weather for ducks!’ Mum said he meant well.
Amy hoists herself up higher; it was a pity to waste the apples Mr Ellis would probably be glad if she picked them up - they would rot and spoil his lawn. He used to mention the leaves from the apple tree every autumn without fail. She glances again at the closed curtains; they twitch. She freezes. The French windows open and Peter comes out on to the patio, walks down the steps and stands in the middle of the lawn staring at the pond. He looks up and sees Amy. He sees her head stuck on the top of the wall; the rest of her is invisible. The rest of her doesn’t exist. The sun is shining behind her head through the thinning leaves of the apple tree; it catches the round red globes of the apples. Two crows settle on the ornamental cherry. They are waiting. The head is golden oracular. When it speaks it will be the truth.
He must try to understand what it is saying. There will be a cue. A bird cackles in the shrubbery. Ware’ says one of the crows, ‘beware.’
‘Hi!’ says Amy, embarrassed that he has caught her peering over his wall. She hopes he will not think she was thinking about the apples on the grass. She pulls out a bit of ground-sel that has rooted itself between the stones. ‘Pond doing all right?’ she says.
‘It’s shallow,’ says Peter.
‘Deep enough, ‘ she says. ‘The time it took!’
Time, he thinks, there was to be something about time, I remember that.
‘Last winter,’ she explains, ‘my Dad says he couldn’t tackle it.’
‘My father can tackle anything.’
Last night Peter threw his plate at the telly. The soup ran down the screen, bits of crouton and vegetable fell on the carpet. The screen didn’t break and none of the people inside took any notice. They went on sipping their drinks and shooting each other. He thought they looked funny, he began to laugh. His mother came in; he could see her trying not to react at what be had done. His Dad said, ‘For God’s sake, Peter!’
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They didn’t notice. It didn’t upset them. They don’t mind. I mind them but they don’t mind me.’
‘Peter, it’s the telly, it’s pictures on the telly,’ said his mother.
But he thinks he knows better. It’s no good telling them; he has no words to tell them anything. They don’t get the message.
‘Goldenhead,’ he says..
‘Dad wouldn’t let us have a pond,’ says Amy. ‘I wanted to keep taddies, but he said it was too dangerous.’
‘Dangerous?’ says Peter.
‘They know someone had a baby who drowned in a fishpond. They just took their eyes off it for a moment and it fell in. It was Mrs MacKenzie, actually, in the corner house. Mum says she never got over it, but she’s got another baby now. She locks all right now, don’t you think?’
‘You can never tell,’ says Peter. ‘How did it drown?’
‘I said it fell in.’
‘But it’s so shallow.’
‘It was only a little baby.’
‘It must have wanted to die.’
‘Oh no, not a baby!’
‘It must have lain down on the bottom.’
He sees the blonde baby dressed in pink; it wades into the pond and lies down face upwards with its hands folded and its eyes shut. Goldfish swim across its face.
‘Maybe the water was cold and it got a shock. Anyhow I’m telling you it happened,’ said Amy.
‘I believe you,’ said Peter.
‘So Dad said he’d never have a pond in the garden. Too much hard work, anyhow,, if you ask me. It’s got leaves in. If you let them stay in the water all the oxygen goes out and the fish die, my Dad says.’
‘I’m going inside now,’ says Peter.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to be quiet,’ he says accusingly. ‘Very, very quiet.’
‘Sorry,’ says Amy. ‘Sorry I spoke.’
He comes over the grass towards her and stands under the wall, crushing the windfall apples.
‘Why aren’t you at school? What are you doing here?’
‘Dentist,’ says Amy carelessly. ‘What about you then?’
‘I’m not going at the moment. I’m not well.’
‘Poor you,’ she says perfunctorily.
‘I don’t care.’
‘Don’t care was made to care,’ she chants suddenly, disconcertingly. ‘Don’t care was hung. Don’t care was put in a pot and boiled till he was done!’
‘Don’t say that!’ he glares up at her.
‘My Nan says that!’
‘Witch!’ he spits at her.
‘All right, all right.’ Suddenly she takes fright and slides down the wall. Back on her own side she bends and pulls her socks up. His face is round and pale on the top of the wall, his eyes invisible behind his spectacles, the braces on his teeth catching the sun.
‘What was it you were going to say?’ he says urgently.
‘When?’ She is aware of an unreasonable vehemence; she is brave but frightened.
‘When you climbed up the wall. I’m expecting a message.’
‘I was just having a look, ‘ she says, and turns and walks steadily back to the house.
He shouts after her, ‘Tell me! Tell me!’
Then he thinks, but she was only the messenger.
The crows rise, flapping darkly from the cherry tree. Long, red leaves like tongues fall on the wet grass.
They will find him face downwards in the blue fishpond.
They will wonder how he managed to do it in such shallow water.
Page(s) 8-10
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