should imagine.’
‘Ah, lonely,’ the boy says. ‘It’s not good. You start to get funny ideas, do you know? You say things you don’t mean. Calling you raghead and coon and so on, that wasn’t me, it’s not how I think, I hope you believe that, Sam. I’ll tell you what it was, it was that I thought it would be nice to have an argument with you. Because it’s been lonely, for years it has.’
Suddenly he claps the hand not holding the knife to his eyes. ‘Oh Christ,’ he gasps, ‘oh Christ, it’s starting.’ He breaks into racking sobs, and the black man leaps at him, snatching the knife, throwing it away. But at that the boy begins to flail and scream, screaming: ‘Not like that, not with the knife!’ as they clinch and fall to the carpet.
Other figures bound into the lighted room from the darkened landing. But there can be no more doubt in their minds than there is in the black man’s that the howling, kicking child restrained in his arms is a mad child now for ever.
5
CRACKS
Harry said: ‘It’s like them cases you read about in the paper: like some little old cottage in a village that people walk past every day, and that look just the same as thass always looked, and nobody give it a thought. And then one day someone call, a meter-reader p’rhaps, and it come out that old Mrs Thing has been dead for a month, and everybody’s amazed. I tell you what, Arthur, I’m amazed. I dint see a thing. I say to myself, I say: Well, these stoodent types, they’re essentric, they’re happy just playin their guitars and readin books. It was just like that cottage I was talkin about, and me gooin past and givin a wave to the window every now and then, while someone inside was dyin and wouldn’t tell me.’
‘You can’t be blamed, Harry,’ Arthur said. ‘If his sister-in-law stayed there with him and didn’t notice anything, no one’s going to say that you should have seen more.’
‘She weren’t to blame, neither,’ Harry said, moodily. ‘Poor girl was kept in the dark, like. We know that now. Paul was that close, he never let on to her that he was worried about his little brother. Funny, innit, how we say “cracked” without thinkin what the word mean? You see, when Greg was a schoolboy he start foolin around with this what they call “acid”, and have what they call a “bad crossin” or something like that, and his mind was cracked, like, and in the end that just brook along the crack. And Diana never knoo, o’ny now it come out, when thass too late to do anything. Now she find that a couple of Paul’s friends knoo about it from him a long time agoo. But they dint know Greg, and anyway they thought that was a thing of the past and all cleared up now. Well, that weren’t.’
Arthur said: ‘Will he always be like that?’
‘Dunno,’ Harry said. ‘I mean, the experts, they don’t seem to know. What I gather, Greg int with us, properly speakin, now. Diana think he might stay like that. These friends of Paul’s, they’ve told her that what used to worry Paul was there was something like that in their mother’s family, before this “acid” was even invented. But he must have thought the danger had passed, like, before he even met Diana, prob’bly, and she never heard a word about it. Well, you wouldn’t, would you, if you was courtin, tell the girl that your great-aunt Mabel finished up in a rubber room and your brother might be goonna follow.’
‘You were there,’ Arthur said. ‘How did that come about?’
‘Black Sam come and got me,’ Harry said. ‘Me and Dave, he asked us both to come. And then Frank De Vere, he was drivin Donna home and he see Sam’s taxi outside my place, so he stop, and it end up with us all gooin. Christ, I wish we’d of kept Donna out of it. I dunno how much there is between her and Sam, but there’s something, and that weren’t nice, I can tell you, to be standin beside her while her fella was gettin all them, like, bigoted insults from
‘Ah, lonely,’ the boy says. ‘It’s not good. You start to get funny ideas, do you know? You say things you don’t mean. Calling you raghead and coon and so on, that wasn’t me, it’s not how I think, I hope you believe that, Sam. I’ll tell you what it was, it was that I thought it would be nice to have an argument with you. Because it’s been lonely, for years it has.’
Suddenly he claps the hand not holding the knife to his eyes. ‘Oh Christ,’ he gasps, ‘oh Christ, it’s starting.’ He breaks into racking sobs, and the black man leaps at him, snatching the knife, throwing it away. But at that the boy begins to flail and scream, screaming: ‘Not like that, not with the knife!’ as they clinch and fall to the carpet.
Other figures bound into the lighted room from the darkened landing. But there can be no more doubt in their minds than there is in the black man’s that the howling, kicking child restrained in his arms is a mad child now for ever.
5
CRACKS
Harry said: ‘It’s like them cases you read about in the paper: like some little old cottage in a village that people walk past every day, and that look just the same as thass always looked, and nobody give it a thought. And then one day someone call, a meter-reader p’rhaps, and it come out that old Mrs Thing has been dead for a month, and everybody’s amazed. I tell you what, Arthur, I’m amazed. I dint see a thing. I say to myself, I say: Well, these stoodent types, they’re essentric, they’re happy just playin their guitars and readin books. It was just like that cottage I was talkin about, and me gooin past and givin a wave to the window every now and then, while someone inside was dyin and wouldn’t tell me.’
‘You can’t be blamed, Harry,’ Arthur said. ‘If his sister-in-law stayed there with him and didn’t notice anything, no one’s going to say that you should have seen more.’
‘She weren’t to blame, neither,’ Harry said, moodily. ‘Poor girl was kept in the dark, like. We know that now. Paul was that close, he never let on to her that he was worried about his little brother. Funny, innit, how we say “cracked” without thinkin what the word mean? You see, when Greg was a schoolboy he start foolin around with this what they call “acid”, and have what they call a “bad crossin” or something like that, and his mind was cracked, like, and in the end that just brook along the crack. And Diana never knoo, o’ny now it come out, when thass too late to do anything. Now she find that a couple of Paul’s friends knoo about it from him a long time agoo. But they dint know Greg, and anyway they thought that was a thing of the past and all cleared up now. Well, that weren’t.’
Arthur said: ‘Will he always be like that?’
‘Dunno,’ Harry said. ‘I mean, the experts, they don’t seem to know. What I gather, Greg int with us, properly speakin, now. Diana think he might stay like that. These friends of Paul’s, they’ve told her that what used to worry Paul was there was something like that in their mother’s family, before this “acid” was even invented. But he must have thought the danger had passed, like, before he even met Diana, prob’bly, and she never heard a word about it. Well, you wouldn’t, would you, if you was courtin, tell the girl that your great-aunt Mabel finished up in a rubber room and your brother might be goonna follow.’
‘You were there,’ Arthur said. ‘How did that come about?’
‘Black Sam come and got me,’ Harry said. ‘Me and Dave, he asked us both to come. And then Frank De Vere, he was drivin Donna home and he see Sam’s taxi outside my place, so he stop, and it end up with us all gooin. Christ, I wish we’d of kept Donna out of it. I dunno how much there is between her and Sam, but there’s something, and that weren’t nice, I can tell you, to be standin beside her while her fella was gettin all them, like, bigoted insults from
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