the soldier who blossomed in action, and who was not much concerned with the boudoir. After all, he was a public figure, he perhaps took Gertrude for granted. On their answer to that question would depend their attitude to Gertrude.
The voice droned on, but it was as if a small red window had opened in Ralph’s mind. He had never thought before that his mother had known his stepfather before the marriage which had taken place so suddenly. What if in fact there had been something going on between them while his father was still alive? He shivered as if he had been infected by a fever. He couldn’t bring himself to think of his mother and stepfather in bed together, which was why he had asked for his own bedroom to be changed, so that he would be as far away from them as possible.
But suppose there had been a liaison between them. After all, they had both been teachers and they must have met. True, they had been at different schools but it was inconceivable that they hadn’t met.
Ο God, how dull his stepfather was, in his cloud of chalk. How different from his father who inhabited the large air of the theatre. What a poor ghostly fellow he was in his white dust.
But the idea that his mother had known his stepfather would not leave his mind. How had he never thought of it before?
That night, his stepfather being at a meeting at the school, he said to his mother,
‘Did you know … your husband … before you married him?’
‘I wish you could call him your stepfather, or even refer to him by his first name. Of course I knew him. I knew the family.’
‘But you married my father?’
‘Yes. And listen, Ralph, I have never said this to you before. I made a great mistake in marrying your father.’
He was about to rise and leave the room when she said vehemently, ‘No, it’s time you listened. You sit down there and listen for a change. Did you know that your father was a drunk? Do you know that he twice gave me a black eye? The time I told everybody I had cut myself on the edge of the wardrobe during the power cut, and the time I said I had fallen on the ice? Did you know where he was coming from when his car crashed?’
‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ Ralph shouted. ‘If you say any more I’ll kill you. It’s not true. You’re lying.’
For a moment there he might have attacked her, he looked so white and vicious. It was the first time he had thought of hitting her; he came very close.
Her face was as pale as his and she was almost swaying on her feet but she was shouting at him,
‘He was coming from one of his innumerable lady friends. I didn’t tell you that, did I? I got a message from the police and I went along there. He had told me he was going to be working late at the theatre but he was coming from the opposite direction. He was a stupid man. At least Jim is not stupid.’
He raised his fist as if to hit her, but she didn’t shrink away.
‘Go on, hit me,’ she shouted. ‘Hit me because you can’t stand the truth any more than your father could. He was vulgar, not worth your stepfather’s little finger.’
He turned and ran out of the house.
Of course it wasn’t true. That story was not the one his mother had told him before. And for all he knew the two of them might have killed his father, they might have tampered with the brakes or the engine. After all, a car crash was always suspicious, and his father had been a good if fast driver. His stepfather couldn’t even drive.
He went to the Nightspot where some boys from the school were playing snooker, and older ones drinking at the bar. He stood for a while watching Harry and Jimmy playing. Harry had been to college but had given it up and was now on the dole. Jimmy had never left town at all. He watched as Harry hit the assembled balls and sent them flying across the table. After a while he went and sat down by himself. He felt as if he had run away from home, as if he wanted to kill himself. He was tired of always being in the same room by himself playing records. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to talk to his stepfather. The two of them were together, had shut him out, he was like a refugee in the house. He hated to watch his stepfather eating, and above all he hated to see him kissing his mother before he set off for school with his briefcase under his arm. But then if he himself left home where could he go? He had no money. He loathed being dependent on them for pocket money, which he used buying records.
He hated his mother as much as he hated his stepfather. At other times he thought that they might have been able to live together, just the two of them, if his stepfather had not appeared. Why, he had loved her in the past and she had loved him, but now she had shut him out because she thought he was being unfair to her husband. He was such a drip: he couldn’t play snooker, and all he did was mark essays every night. The house felt cold now, he was rejected, the other two were drawing closer and closer together.
‘How’s old Sniffy,’ said Terry as he sat down at the same table, Frank beside him. They, of course, were unemployed and Terry had been inside for nicking stuff and also for nearly killing a fellow at a dance.
Then they began to talk about school and he had to sit and listen. Terry had once punched Caney and had been dragged away by the police. No one could control him at all. Frank was just as dangerous, but brighter, more cunning.
‘Have a whisky,’ said Terry. ‘Go on. I bet you’ve never had a whisky before. I’ll buy it for you.’
The snooker table with the green baize brought unbearable memories back to him, and he said,
‘Right. Right then.’
‘I’ll tell you another thing,’ said Terry. ‘Old Sniffy’s a poof. I always thought he was a poof. What age was the bugger when he got married? Where was he getting it before that?’
Frank didn’t say anything at all, but watched Ralph. He had never liked him. He had belonged to the academic stream while he himself was always in one of the bottom classes, though he was much brighter.
‘A poof,’ Terry repeated. ‘But he’s having it off now, eh, Frank?’ And winked at Frank. Ralph drank the whisky in one gulp, and tears burned his eyes.
‘Old bastard,’ said Terry. ‘He belted me a few times and I wasn’t even in his class.’
The two of them took Ralph back to his house. Then they stood around it for a while shouting at the lighted window, ‘Sniffy the Poof, Sniffy the Poof.’ And then ran away into the darkness. Ralph staggered to his room.
‘What was that? Who was shouting there?’ said his mother. ‘Some of your friends. You’re drunk. You’re disgustingly drunk.’
But he pushed her away and went to his bed while the walls and ceiling spun about him and the bed moved up and down like a boat beneath him.
He heard his mother shouting at his stepfather, ‘What are you going to do about it then? You can’t sit here and do nothing. He’s drunk, I’m telling you. Will you give up those exercise books and do something?’
Later he heard his mother slamming the door and heard the car engine start, then he fell into a deep sleep.
At breakfast no one spoke. It was like a funeral. He himself had a terrible headache, like a drill behind his right eye, and he felt awful. His mother stared down at the table. His stepfather didn’t kiss her when he left for school: he seemed preoccupied and pale. It was as if the house had come to a complete stop, as if it had crashed.
‘You have to remember,’ said his stepfather when talking about Hamlet that morning, ‘you have to remember that this was a drunken court. Hamlet comments on the general drunkenness. Even at the end it is drink that kills Hamlet and Claudius and Gertrude. Hamlet is at the centre of this corruption and is infected by it.’
His voice seemed quieter, more reflective, as if he was thinking of something else. Once he glanced across to Ralph but said nothing. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at the end of the period, ‘I meant to return your essays but I didn’t