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Ben, in the World
Doris Lessing
From Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the sequel to one of her most celebrated novels, ‘The Fifth Child’.‘The Fifth Child’, Doris Lessing’s 1988 novel, made a powerful impact on publication. Its account of idyllic marital and parental bliss shattered by the arrival of the feral fifth child of the Lovatts made for unnerving and compulsive reading.That child, Ben, is the central character of this sequel, which picks up the fable at the end of his childhood and takes our primal, misunderstood, maladjusted teenager out into the world. He meets mostly with mockery, fear and incomprehension, but with just enough kindness and openness to keep him afloat as his adventures take him from London to the south of France and on to South America in his restless quest for community, companionship and peace.Lessing employs a plain, unadorned prose fit for fables; again, we have a childlike perspective at the heart of the book; again, the world in all its malevolence and misapprehension swirls around at the edge, while, occasionally, a strong character steps forward to try to set a good example.




Ben, in the World
Doris Lessing
the sequel to The Fifth Child



Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u03467641-653f-5897-a2ee-118fa8983d0d)
Title Page (#u49b0e7ce-bc37-5cbf-814a-4defc8138de9)
Author’s Notes (#u52b50d92-14c8-5c67-8ed1-bd1691aa6c7f)
‘How old are you?… (#u95c55199-dc9e-5228-9a85-244da71b8e28)
On the dark pavement outside Mimosa House… (#u19d32f35-1520-53ee-8f28-7daf31500768)
He walked along a street – rather… (#u75a5b5df-d1df-5c49-bec0-62c9a7627dd1)
Richards programme for keeping Ben amused was… (#ua4713505-1b4e-5977-a734-547e27886143)
But that was not as easy as… (#u8503d91e-d2d5-5ad2-9d61-463d9497e8cb)
In the morning Ben was silent and… (#u33b54b0b-e47b-54a1-a704-796bfc17d6bb)
Acknowledgements (#u4eead82c-b3c0-59b6-adc7-28af82de816e)
Read On (#ud93458ee-13b9-571a-84b4-caeda7c46bce)
The Grass is Singing (#u9756f454-a0bd-5767-ab4f-9efc869babe6)
The Golden Notebook (#u51d4e00f-3daf-5a63-b2dc-2f5e6cc72714)
The Good Terrorist (#u1d91d72d-837d-5eb3-8d65-3e5d4229d753)
Love, Again (#u50061c70-9f7e-5dab-968e-75269803f91a)
The Fifth Child (#u3e1fa339-8750-5c6e-8975-ab63b7165141)
Copyright (#u43acad7e-d7dd-58e5-82ba-dedff6a32ad6)
About the Publisher (#u101a9ad5-7a50-5c0a-81e1-2b94008628a6)

Author’s Notes (#ulink_674fe540-6675-58dc-bc36-8574f4e59e49)
‘The Cages’ were described to me in miserable detail ten years ago by someone who had seen them in a research institute in London. Here they are set in Brazil, because of the exigencies of the plot, but I am sure no such unpleasant phenomenon exists in Brazil.

The authorities have cleared the gangs of criminal children from the streets of the centre of Rio. They are no longer permitted to annoy tourists.
‘How old are you?’ (#ulink_fb3c9f17-16b7-5d9f-b20d-0eb0d9889b8a)
‘Eighteen.’
This reply did not come at once because Ben was afraid of what he knew was going to happen now, which was that the young man behind the glass protecting him from the public set down his biro on the form he was filling in, and then, with a look on his face that Ben knew only too well, inspected his client. He was allowing himself amusement that was impatient, but it was not quite derision. He was seeing a short, stout, or at least heavily built man – he was wearing a jacket too big for him – who must be at least forty. And that face! It was a broad face, with strongly delineated features, a mouth stretched in a grin – what did he think was so bloody funny? – a broad nose with flaring nostrils, eyes that were greenish, with sandy lashes, under bristly sandy brows. He had a short neat pointed beard that didn’t fit with the face. His hair was yellow and seemed – like his grin – to shock and annoy, long, and falling forward in a slope, and in stifflocks on either side, as if trying to caricature a fashionable cut. To cap it all, he was using a posh voice; was he taking the mickey? The clerk was going in for this minute inspection because he was discommoded by Ben to the point of feeling angry. He sounded peevish when he said, ‘You can’t be eighteen. Come on, what’s your real age?’
Ben was silent. He was on the alert, every little bit of him, knowing there was danger. He wished he had not come to this place, which could close its walls around him. He was listening to the noises from outside, for reassurance from his normality. Some pigeons were conversing in a plane tree on the pavement, and he was with them, thinking how they sat gripping twigs with pink claws that he could feel tightening around his own finger; they were contented, with the sun on their backs. Inside here, were sounds that he could not understand until he had isolated each one. Meanwhile the young man in front of him was waiting, his hand holding the biro and fiddling it between his fingers. A telephone rang just beside him. On either side of him were several young men and women with that glass in front of them. Some used instruments that clicked and chattered, some stared at screens where words appeared and went. Each of these noisy machines Ben knew was probably hostile to him. Now he moved slightly to one side, to get rid of the reflections on the glass that were bothering him, and preventing him from properly seeing this person who was angry with him.
‘Yes. I am eighteen,’ he said.
He knew he was. When he had gone to find his mother, three winters ago – he did not stay because his hated brother Paul had come in – she had written in large words on a piece of card:
Your name is Ben Lovatt.
Your mother’s name is Harriet Lovatt.
Your father’s name is David Lovatt.
You have four brothers and sisters, Luke, Helen, Jane, and Paul. They are older than you.
You are fifteen years old.
On the other side of the card had been:
You were born………….
Your home address is…………
This card had afflicted Ben with such a despair of rage that he took it from his mother, and ran out of the house. He scribbled over the name Paul, first. Then, the other siblings. Then, the card falling to the floor and picked up showing the reverse side, he scribbled with his black biro over all the words there, leaving only a wild mess of lines.
That number, fifteen, kept coming up in questions that were always – so he felt – being put to him. ‘How old are you?’ Knowing it was so important, he remembered it, and when the year turned around at Christmas, which no one could miss, he added a year. Now I am sixteen. Now I am seventeen. Now, because a third winter has gone, I am eighteen.
‘OK, then, when were you born?’
With every day since he had scribbled with that angry black pen all over the back of the card he had understood better what a mistake he had made. And he had destroyed the whole card, in a culminating fit of rage, because now it was useless. He knew his name. He knew ‘Harriet’ and ‘David’ and did not care about his brothers and sisters who wished he was dead.
He did not remember when he was born.
Listening, as he did, to every sound, he heard how the noises in that office were suddenly louder, because in a line of people waiting outside one of the glass panels, a woman had begun shouting at the clerk who was interviewing her, and because of this anger released into the air, all the lines began moving and shuffling, and other people were muttering, and then said aloud, like a barking, short angry words like Bastards, Shits – and these were words that Ben knew very well, and he was afraid of them. He felt the cold of fear moving down from the back of his neck to his spine.
The man behind him was impatient, and said, ‘I haven’t got all day if you have.’
‘When were you born? What date?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ben.
And now the clerk put an end to it, postponing the problem, with, ‘Go and find your birth certificate. Go to the Records Office. That’ll settle it. You don’t know your last employer. You don’t have an address. You don’t know your date of birth.’
With these words his eyes left Ben’s face, and he nodded at the man behind to come forward, displacing Ben, who went straight out of that office, feeling as if all the hairs of his body, the hairs on his head, were standing straight up, he was so trapped and afraid. Outside was a pavement, with people, a little street, full of cars, and under the plane tree where the pigeons were moving about, cooing and complacent, a bench. He sat on it at the other end from a young woman who gave him a glance, but then another, frowned, and went off, looking back at him with that look on her face which Ben knew and expected. She was not afraid of him, but thought that she might be soon. Her body was all haste and apprehension, like one escaping. She went into a shop, glancing back.
Ben was hungry. He had no money. There were some broken crusts on the ground, left for the pigeons. He gathered them up hastily, looking about him: he had been scolded for this before. Now an old man came to sit on the bench, and he gave Ben a long stare, but decided not to bother with what his instincts were telling him. He closed his eyes. The sun made a tiny bloom of sweat on the old face. Ben sat on, thinking how he must go back to the old woman, but she would be disappointed in him. She had told him to come to this office and claim unemployment benefit. The thought of her made him smile – a very different grin from the one that had annoyed the clerk. He sat smiling, a small smile that showed a gleam of teeth in his beard, and watched how the old man woke up, to wipe away the sweat that was running down his face, saying to the sweat, ‘What? What’s that?’ as if it had reminded him of something. And then, to cover himself, he said sharply to Ben, ‘What do you think you’re laughing at?’
Ben left the bench and the shade of the tree and the companionship of the pigeons, and walked through streets knowing he was going the right way, for about two miles. Now he was nearing a group of big blocks of flats. He went direct to one of them, and inside it, saw the lift come running down towards him, hissing and bumping, tried to make himself enter it, but his fear of lifts took him to the stairs. One, two, three…eleven flights of grey cold stairs, listening to the lift grumble and crash on the other side of a wall. On the landing were four doors. He went straight to one from where a rich meaty smell was coming, making his mouth fill with water. He turned the door knob, rattled it, and stood back to stare expectantly at the door, which opened. And there an old woman stood, smiling. ‘Oh, Ben, there you are,’ she said, and put her arm around him to pull him into the room. Inside he stood slightly crouched, darting looks everywhere, first of all to a large tabby cat that sat on a chair arm. Its fur was standing on end. The old woman went to it, and said, ‘There, there, it’s all right, puss,’ and under her calming hand its terror abated, and it became a small neat cat. Now the old woman went to Ben, with the same words, ‘There, Ben, it’s all right, come and sit down.’ Ben allowed his eyes to leave puss, but did not lose his wariness, sending glances in her direction.
This room was where the old woman had her life. On a gas stove was a saucepan of meat stew, and it was this that Ben had smelled on the landing. ‘It’s all right, Ben,’ she said again, and ladled stew into two bowls, put hunks of bread beside one, for Ben, set her own opposite him, and then spooned out a portion into a saucer for the cat, which she put on the floor by the chair. But the cat wasn’t taking any chances: it sat quiet, its eyes fixed on Ben.
Ben sat down, and his hands were already about to dig into the mound of meat, when he saw the old woman shake her head at him. He picked up a spoon and used it, conscious of every movement, being careful, eating tidily, though it was evident he was very hungry. The old woman ate a little, but mostly watched him, and when he had finished, she scraped out from the saucepan everything that was left of the stew, and put it on his plate.
‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ she said, meaning that she would have made more. ‘Fill up on bread.’
Ben finished the stew, and then the bread. There was nothing else to eat except some cake, which she pushed towards him, but he ignored it.
Now his attention was free, and she said, slowly, carefully, as if to a child, ‘Ben, did you go to the office?’ She had told him how to get there.
‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’
‘They said, “How old are you?”’
Here the old woman sighed, and put her hand to her face, rubbing it around there, as if wiping away difficult thoughts. She knew Ben was eighteen: he kept saying so. She believed him. It was the one fact he kept repeating. But she knew that was no eighteen-year-old, sitting there in front of her, and she had decided not to go on with the thoughts of what that meant. It’s not my business – what he really is, sums up what she felt. Deep waters! Trouble! Keep out!
He sat there like a dog expecting a rebuke, his teeth revealed in that other grin, which she knew and understood now, a stretched, teeth-showing grin that meant fear.
‘Ben, you must go back to your mother and ask her for your birth certificate. She’ll have it, I’m sure. It’d save you all the complications and the questions. You do remember how to get there?’
‘Yes, I know that.’
‘Well, I think you should go soon. Perhaps tomorrow?’
Ben’s eyes did not leave her face, taking in every little movement of eyes, mouth, her smile, her insistence. It was not the first time she had told him to go home to find his mother. He did not want to. But if she said he must… For him what was difficult was this: here there was friendship for him, warmth, kindness, and here, too, insistence that he must expose himself to pain and confusion, and danger. Ben’s eyes did not leave that face, that smiling face, for him at this moment the bewildering face of the world.
‘You see, Ben, I have to live on my pension. I have only so much money to live on. I want to help you. But if you got some money – that office would give you money – and that would help me. Do you understand, Ben?’ Yes, he did. He knew money. He had learned that hard lesson. Without money you did not eat.
And now, as if it was no great thing she wanted him to do, just a little thing, she said, ‘Good, then that is settled.’
She got up. ‘Look, I’ve got something I think would be just right for you.’
Folded over a chair was a jacket, which she had found in a charity shop, searching until there was one with wide shoulders. The jacket Ben had on was dirty, and torn, too.
He took it off. The jacket she had found fitted his big shoulders and chest but was loose around the waist. ‘Look, you can pull it in.’ There was a belt, which she adjusted. And there were trousers, too. ‘And now I want you to have a bath, Ben.’
He took off the new jacket and his trousers, obedient, watching her all the time.
‘I’m going to put away these trousers, Ben.’ She did so. ‘And I have got new underpants, and vests.’
He was standing naked there, watching, while she went next door to a little bathroom. His nostrils flared, taking in the smell of water. Waiting, he checked all the smells in the room, the fading aromas of the good stew, a warm friendly smell; the bread, which smelled like a person; then a rank wild smell – the cat, still watching him; the smell of a slept-in bed, where the covers had been pulled up covering the pillows, which had a different smell. And he listened, too. The lift was silent, behind two walls. There was a rumbling in the sky, but he knew aeroplanes, was not afraid of them. The traffic down there he did not hear at all – he had shut it out of his awareness.
The old woman came back, and said, ‘Now, Ben.’ He followed her, clambered into the water, and crouched in it. ‘Do sit down,’ she said. He hated the submission to the dangerous slipperiness, but now he was sitting in hot water to his waist. He shut his eyes, and with his teeth bared, this time in a grin of resignation, he let her wash him. He knew this washing was something he had to do, from time to time. It was expected of him. In fact he was beginning to enjoy water.
Now the old woman, Ben’s eyes no longer fastened on her face, allowed herself to show the curiosity she felt, which could never be assuaged – or indulged in.
Under her hands was a strong broad back, with fringes of brown hair on either side of the backbone, and on the shoulders a mat of wet fur: it felt like that, as if she were washing a dog. On the upper arms there was hair, but not so much, not more than could be on an ordinary man. His chest was hairy, but it wasn’t like fur, it was a man’s chest. She handed him the soap but he let it slide into the water, and dug around furiously for it. She found it, and lathered him vigorously, and then used a little hand-shower to get it all off. He bounded out of the bath, and she made him go back, and she washed his thighs, his backside, and then, his genitals. He had no self-consciousness about these, and so she didn’t either. And then, he could get out, which he did laughing, and shaking himself into the towel she held. She enjoyed hearing him laugh: it was like a bark. Long ago she had a dog who barked like that.
She dried him, all over, and then led him back to the other room, naked, and made him put on his new underpants, his new vest, a charity shop shirt, his trousers. Then she put a towel around his shoulders and as he began to jerk about in protest, she said, ‘Yes, Ben, you have to.’
She trimmed his beard first. It was stiff and bristly, but she was able to make a good job of it. And now his hair, and that was a different matter, for it was coarse and thick. The trouble was his double crown which, if cut short, showed like stubbly whorls on the scalp. It was necessity that had left the hair on the top of his head long, and at the sides. She told him that one of these new clever hairdressers would make him look like a film star, but since he did not take this in, she amended it to, ‘They could make you look so smart, Ben, you’d not know yourself.’
But he didn’t look too bad now, and he smelled clean.
It was early evening and she did what she would have done alone: she brought out cans of beer from her fridge, filled her glass, and then she filled one for him. They were going to spend the evening doing what he liked best, watching television.
First she found a piece of paper and wrote on it:
Mrs Ellen Biggs
11 Mimosa House
Halley Street, London SE6.
She said, ‘Ask your mother for your birth certificate. If she has to send for it, then tell her she can always write to you care of me – and here is the address.’
He did not answer: he was frowning.
‘Do you understand, Ben?’
‘Yes.’
She did not know whether he did or not, but thought so.
He was looking at the television. She got up, switched it on, and came back by way of the cat. ‘There, there puss, it’s all right.’ But the cat never for one moment took its eyes off Ben.
And now it was an easy pleasant evening. He did not seem to mind what he saw. Sometimes she switched to another channel, thinking he was bored. He did like wildlife programmes, but there wasn’t one tonight. This was a good thing, really, because he sometimes got too excited: she knew wild instincts had been aroused. She had understood from the start that he was controlling instincts she could only guess at. Poor Ben – she knew he was that, but not how, or why.
At bedtime she unrolled on to the floor the futon he slept on, and put blankets beside it in case: he usually did not use coverings. The cat, seeing that this enemy was on the floor, leaped up on to the bed and lay close against the old woman’s side. From there she could not watch Ben, but it was all right, she felt safe. When the lights were off the room was not really dark, because there was a moon that night.
The old woman listened for Ben’s breathing to change into what she called his night breathing. It was, she thought, like listening to a story, events or adventures that possibly the cat would understand. In his sleep Ben ran from enemies, hunted, fought. She knew he was not human: ‘not one of us’ as she put it. Perhaps he was a kind of yeti. When she had seen him first, in a supermarket, he was prowling – there was only that word for it – as he reached out to grab up loaves of bread. She had had a glimpse of him then, the wild man, and she had never forgotten it. He was a controlled explosion of furious needs, hungers and frustrations, and she knew that even as she said to the attendant, ‘It’s all right, he is with me.’ She handed him a pie she had just bought for her lunch, and he was eating it as she led him out of the place. She took him home, and fed him. She washed him, though he had protested that first time. She saw how he reacted to some cold meat – quite alarming it was; but she bought extra meat for him. It was just here where he was most different; meat, he could not get enough. And she was an old woman, eating a little bit of this here, a snack there – an apple, cheese, cake, a sandwich. The stew that day had been just luck: she ate that kind of meal so seldom.
One night, when the three of them had gone to bed, and to sleep, she had woken because of a pressure along her legs. Ben had crept up and laid himself down, his head near her feet, his legs bent. It was the cat’s distress that had woken her. But Ben was asleep. It was how a dog lays itself down, close, for company, and her heart ached, knowing his loneliness. In the morning he woke embarrassed. He seemed to think he had done wrong, but she said, ‘It’s all right, Ben. There’s plenty of room.’ It was a big bed, the one she had had when she was married.
She thought that he was like an intelligent dog, always trying to anticipate wants and commands. Not like a cat at all: that was a different kind of sensitivity. And he was not like a monkey, for he was slow and heavy. Not like anything she had known. He was Ben, he was himself – whatever that was. She was pleased he was going to find his family. He was hardly communicative, but she had gathered it was a well-off family. And there was his accent which was not what you’d expect, from how he looked. He seemed to like his mother. If she herself could be good to Ben – so Ellen Biggs saw it – then his family could too. But if it didn’t work, and he turned up here again, then she would go with him to the Public Records Office and find out about his age. She was so confused about this she had given up trying to puzzle it out. He repeated that he was eighteen, and she had to believe him. In many ways he was childish, and yet when she took a good look at that face she could even think him middle-aged, with those lines around his eyes. Little ones, but still: no eighteen-year-old could have them. She had actually gone so far in her thoughts to wonder if the people he belonged to, whoever they were, matured early, in which case they would die young, according to our ideas. Middle-aged at twenty, and old at forty, whereas she, Ellen Biggs, was eighty and only just beginning to feel her age to the point that she hoped she would not have to make that annoying journey to the Records Office, and then stand in a line: the thought made her tired and cross. She fell asleep, listening to Ben dream, and woke to find him gone. The paper with her address had gone, and the ten-pound note she had left for him. Although she had expected it, now she had to sit down, her hand pressing on a troubled heart. Since he had come into her life, weeks ago, foreboding had come too. Sitting alone when he had gone off somewhere she was thinking, Where’s Ben? What is he doing? Was he being cheated again? Far too often had she heard from him, ‘They took my money,’ – ‘They stole everything.’ The trouble was, information came out of him in a jumble.
‘When was that, Ben?’
‘It was summer.’
‘No, I mean, what year?’
‘I don’t know. It was after the farm.’
‘And when was that?’
‘I was there two winters.’
She knew he was about fourteen when he left his family. So what had he been doing for four years?
His mother had been wrong, thinking he had gone right away. He and his gang of truants from school were camping in an empty house on the edge of their town, and from there made forays, shoplifting, breaking into shops at night, and at weekends went to nearby towns to hang about the streets with the local youths, hoping for a fight and some fun. Ben was their leader because he was so strong, and stood up for them. So they thought, but really the reason was that inwardly he was mature, he was a grown man, more of a parent, whereas they were still children. One by one they were caught, sent to borstal, or returned to parents and school. One evening he was standing on the edge of a crowd of fighting youngsters – he did not fight, he was afraid of his strength, his rage – and he realised he was alone, without companions. For a while he was one of a gang of much older youths, but he did not dominate them as he had the young ones. They forced him to steal for them, made fun of him, jeered at his posh accent. He left them and drifted down to the West Country where he fell in with a motorbike gang, which was engaged in warfare with a rival gang. He longed to drive a motorcycle, but could not get the hang of it. But it was enough to be near them, these machines, he loved them so. The gang used him to guard their bikes when they went into a caff, or a pub. They gave him food, and even a little money sometimes. One night the rival gang found him standing over half a dozen machines, beat him up, twelve to one, and left him bleeding. His own gang returned to find a couple of their machines gone, and were ready to beat him up again but found this apparently slow stupid oaf transformed into a whirling screaming fighting madman. He nearly killed one of them. Setting on him all together they subdued him, no bones broken, but again, he was bleeding and sick. He was taken into a pub by a girl who worked there. She washed him down, sat him in a corner, gave him something to eat, talked him into sense again. He was quiet at last, dazed perhaps.
A man came to him, sat down, and asked if he was looking for work. This was how Ben found himself on the farm. He went with Matthew Grindly because he knew that from now on any member of the two gangs seeing him would summon his mates, and he would be beaten up again.
The farm was well away from any main road, down an overgrown and muddy lane. It was neglected, and so was the house, which was large, and bits of it were shut off where the roof leaked too badly. This farm had been left twenty years before by their father to Mary Grindly, Matthew Grindly, and Ted Grindly. A farm, but no money. They were pretty well self-sufficient, living off their animals, fruit trees, the vegetable garden. What fields there were – one after another they had been sold off to neighbouring farmers – grew fodder. Once a month, Mary and Matthew – now Mary and Ben – walked into the village three miles off to buy groceries, and liquor for Ted. They walked because their car was rusting in a yard.
When money was needed for food, electricity, rates, Mary said to Matthew, ‘Take that beast to market and get what you can for it.’ But bills were ignored for months at a time, and often not paid at all.
This disgraceful place tended to be forgotten by everyone: the locals were part ashamed because of it, and part sorry for the Grindlys. It was known that ‘the boys’ – but they were getting old now – were not far off feeble-minded. They were illiterate, too. Mary had expected to marry, but it had come to nothing. It was she who ran the farm. She told her brothers what to do: mend that fence… clean out that byre… take the sheep for shearing… plant the vegetables. She was at them all day and bitter because she had to be. Then it was Matthew who was doing all the work: Ted was drinking himself to death quietly in his room. He was no trouble, but he couldn’t work. Matthew was getting arthritic, and he had chest problems, and soon the hard work was beyond him too. He fed the chickens and looked after the vegetables, but that was about it.
Ben was given a room, with poor furniture in it – very different from the pleasant rooms he had been brought up in. He could eat as much as he wanted. He worked from daylight to dark, every day. He did know that he did most of the work, but not that without him the farm would collapse. This farm, or anything like it, would soon become impossible, when the European Commission issued its diktats, and its spy-eyes circled for ever overhead. The place was a scandal, and a waste of good land. People came tramping along the lane and through the farmyard, hoping to buy it – the telephone had been cut off, for non-payment – and they would be met by Mary, an angry old woman, who told them to go away, and slammed the door in their face.
When on the neighbouring farms they were asked about the Grindlys, people tended to equivocate, siding with them against officialdom and the curious. If they lost the farm, what would happen to those poor derelicts, Ted and Matthew? They would find themselves in a Home, that’s what. And Mary? No, let the poor things live out their time. And they had that chap there who’d come from somewhere, no one knew where, a kind of yeti he looked like, but he did the work well enough.
Once, when Ben had gone with Mary to the village to carry groceries back, he was stopped by a man who said to him, ‘You’re with the Grindlys, they say. Are they doing right by you?’
‘What do you want?’ asked Ben.
‘What are they paying you? Not much if I know the Grindlys. I’ll make it worth your while to come to me. I’m Tom Wandsworth… ’ – he repeated the name, and then again, ‘… and anyone around here will tell you how to get to my farm. Think about it.’
‘What did he say?’ Mary asked, and Ben told her.
Ben had never been given a pay-book, and terms and conditions of work had not been mentioned. Mary had given him a couple of quid when they went to the village so he could buy toothpaste, that kind of thing. She was impressed that he cared about his personal cleanliness, and liked his clothes neat.
Now she said, ‘I’m keeping your wages for you, Ben. You know that.’
How could he know? This was the first time he had heard about it. Mary believed that he was stupid, like her brothers, but now saw trouble loom.
‘You don’t want to leave us, Ben,’ she said. ‘You’d not do better with anyone else. I’ve got a good little bit of money put aside for you. You can have it any time.’
She pointed to a high-up drawer in her room. Then she fetched a chair, made him stand on it, and held the back steady. There were rolls of notes in the drawer. To Ben it seemed more money than he had imagined possible.
‘Is that mine?’ he asked.
‘Half of it is yours,’ said Mary.
And when he had gone out of the room, she hid it somewhere else.
It was Mary he did not want to leave, though he was fond of the cow and enjoyed the antics of the pigs. He thought Mary was good to him. She mended his clothes, bought him a new thick jersey for the winter, and gave him plenty of meat to eat. She was never cross with him, as she was with her brothers.
He had a life the others did not guess at. They all went to bed early, with nothing to occupy their minds, and no television: Ted was usually drunk and snoring by nine or ten, and Mary listened to the news on the radio, and went to her room afterwards. Ben slid out over the sill of his window when the house was quiet, and went about the fields and woods, alone and free – himself. He would catch and eat little animals, or a bird. He crouched behind a bush for hours to watch fox cubs playing. He sat with his back against a tree trunk and listened to the owls. Or he stood by the cow with his arm around her neck, nuzzling his face into her; and the warmth that came into him from her, and the hot sweet blasts of her breath on his arms and legs when she turned her head to sniff at him meant the safety of kindness. Or he stood leaning on a fence post staring up at the night sky, and on clear nights he sang a little grunting song to the stars, or he danced around, lifting his feet and stamping. Once old Mary thought she heard a noise that needed investigation, went to a window, and caught a glimpse of Ben, and crept down in the dark to watch and listen. It really did make her scalp prickle and her flesh go cold. But why should she care what he did for fun? Without him the animals would be unfed, the cows would stay unmilked, the pigs would have to live in their dirt. Mary Grindly was curious about Ben, but not much. She had had too much trouble in her life to care about other people. Ben’s coming to the farm she saw as God’s kindness to her.
Then Ted fell down some steps when drunk, and died. Surely Matthew should have been next, the half-crippled coughing man, but it was Mary who had a heart attack. Officials of all kinds suddenly became curious, and one of them, demanding to see accounts, asked Ben questions about himself. Ben was going to say something about the money owed to him, but his instincts shouted at him, Danger – and he ran away.
He picked apples on a cider farm, and then he picked raspberries. The other pickers were Poles, mostly students, flown in by a contractor of labour, jolly young people determined to have a good time in spite of the long hours they had to work. Ben was silent and watchful, on his guard. There were caravans to sleep in, but he hated that closeness, and the bad air, and when he had finished eating with them, at night, listening to their songs and their jokes and their laughter, he took a sleeping bag into a wood.
When the picking was finished he had a good bit of money, and he was happy, because he knew that it was having no money that made him helpless. One of the singing and joking young people stole his money from his jacket that was hanging above him on a bush where he lay asleep. Ben made himself go back to the farm, thinking of all that money in the drawer, and half of it belonging to him, but the house was locked, the animals were gone, and there were already nettles growing close up around the house. He did not care about Matthew, who had scarcely spoken to him except for unkind remarks such as when the old dog died – ‘We don’t need another dog, we’ve got Ben.’
He went home to find his mother but she had moved again. He had to use his wits to find where she was. A house, but nothing like the one he thought of as home. He could not make himself go in, because he saw Paul there, and the rage that was his enemy nearly overcame him.
So he took the old, old road to London, rich London, where surely there must be a little something for him too. There he did find work, was cheated again, lost heart, and Ellen Briggs found him starving in a supermarket.
On the dark pavement outside Mimosa House (#ulink_3a9d269f-9dba-5823-b9d6-5b6abdca221d) there seemed to be no one about, but Ben knew how at night a shadow could lengthen and become an enemy, and, turning a corner, he nearly ran into a drunk who was lurching about and swearing and muttering. Ben swerved past and ran across empty streets, not bothering about lights. Not until he reached Richmond did he begin using the crossings, telling himself, Go on green, Stop on red. There were people about now, quite a lot. On he went, following instincts that worked well if he didn’t confuse them with maps and directions, and then he was in a high street and he was hungry. He went into a cafe that said ‘Breakfast All Day’, and, as always in a new place, looked hard at faces for that surprised stare that might turn out to be dangerous. But it was too early for people to be noticing much. He was careful to eat his breakfast slowly and attentively, and left the cafe feeling pleased with himself. Off he went again, and by midday was crossing fields with the sun spreading warmth everywhere. Then he was in a wood. A thrush was riffling about in last year’s leaves. He caught it easily, had its feathers off, and ate it in a couple of crunches. The mate came to investigate. The two birds and their hot blood stayed a craving that was always with him and then he went on, fast, though not running because he knew that brought people after him. In a service station he bought a bottle of water and came out of the shop to see a motorbike roaring to a stop. Ben went to it, pulled by his love for the shining, bright, powerful machine. He stood grinning – his little smile of pleasure. The youth on the machine suppressed any doubts he might have had about this odd-looking bearded man, because he recognized a compatriot in his country, a lover like himself, and he said, ‘Watch it a minute,’ and went into the shop. When he came out Ben was stroking the handlebars, with a look on his face that compelled this young man who normally would let no one so much as touch his machine, to say, ‘Get on, then.’ And Ben leaped up and off they went.
‘Where are you going?’
‘This way,’ Ben shouted into the wind.
The great machine growled and roared and bounded along, they were whisking through the traffic, and Ben was roaring too: it sounded like a song, a shout of triumph, and the youth driving, hearing all this exultation just behind him, laughed and yelled too, and then began singing a real song, which Ben did not know, though he joined in.
Now there was a little town. There the motorbike turned sharply left, and in a moment had left streets behind for country, but Ben was shouting, ‘Put me down, I’m going wrong.’
The youth yelled, ‘Why didn’t you say?’ and turned the machine in a dangerous swoop in front of cars and lorries, and they sped back to the town centre. ‘Here?’ yelled the youth, and Ben shouted, ‘Yes.’
He was on the pavement in the middle of the town, and the bike was speeding away, and the youth was giving him the thumbs-up.
Ben set his face to where he knew he must go and walked on, thinking of the motorbike, and his teeth were showing white in his beard, from happiness. They had covered a good distance. Ben would reach where he would have to be hours before he had thought; and in fact he was walking into the road he knew so well by mid-afternoon. There was the house, the big wonderful house, with the garden all around it and there… He was looking at windows that had bars on them, and at once a cold but vigorous anger was taking hold of him. Bars: the bars had been for him. He had stood up there shaking those bars with both of his strong fists, and they had not given way at all; only where the bars were set into the walls were bits of paint flaking from all his shaking, showing how little use his strength was. But the anger he felt now was being driven away by a stronger need, pulling him towards the house. His mother, he wanted to see his mother. Because of the kindness of that old lady, he had remembered that other kindness, and understood that that was what it had been: she, like the old lady, had not hurt him, she had come to rescue him from that place… And out of the front door came small children, running. He did not know them, and thought, Of course, they’ve moved. His mother wouldn’t be here now. He turned away from the house, his home, and began walking this way and that through the streets, like a dog nosing for a scent, but it was not a scent he was after; he had actually seen the other house, the one the family had moved to… but wait, there had been another house, after that, and it was the address of that house his mother had put on the big card. It was that house he was moving towards, but it was not what he needed. He had never been to the house where they lived now. He had no way of finding it: he did not have in his mind a pattern of streets, smells, bushes, gates. What now? A desperation like a howl made his chest hurt, and then he thought, Wait, the park, that’s where she’ll be. And he went to the little park where he had played so often with his brothers and sisters. Or rather, where he had watched them play, because they complained he was rough. When he played it had been by himself, or with his mother.
There was a bench he knew well. His mother loved that park, and that bench, and she would sometimes sit there all afternoon. But the bench was empty. Ben understood one thing, that if he walked about a place for too long people would start noticing him. He did walk about for as long as he dared, glancing into people’s faces for ‘the look’, and then sat on a bench from where he could see the bench, which he thought of as his mother’s. He waited. He was hungry again. He left the park to find the little cafe he had used with his gang of mates, the gang he had bossed and led, but the cafe had gone. He bought a meat sandwich from a machine, and returned to the park, and there he saw her, he saw his mother, sitting with a book in her hand. Her shadow lay across grass almost to where he stood. He was repeating in his mind all the things he must ask her, her new address, his exact age, his birth date, did she have his birth certificate? A loving happiness was filling him like sunlight, and then, ready with his questions, ready to greet her, he saw coming towards her across the park grass – Paul; it was Paul, the brother he had hated so terribly that thoughts of killing him once and for ever had filled hours of his childhood. There he was, a tall, rather weedy young man, with long arms and bony hands, and his eyes – but Ben knew those eyes without having to see them: large, hazy blue eyes. Paul was smiling at his mother. She patted the bench beside her and Paul sat down, and the mother took Paul’s hand and held it. A rage so terrible that Ben’s eyes darkened and seemed to bleed was shaking him. He wanted to push him down and… There was one thing he knew, and he knew it very well, because of so many bad things… There were certain feelings he had that were not allowed. Until this rage, this hate, left him alone he could not go anywhere near his mother, near his brother, Paul. But the feelings were getting worse, he could hardly breathe, and through a red glare he watched his mother and that tormentor, that impostor who had always stood between him and his mother, get up and walk away together. Ben followed, but at a good distance. His rage now was being used up by a determination not to be seen. He did not crouch: that was for forests or woods, and he stood upright and walked quietly, well behind the two he followed. Then, there was a house, a rather bigger one than the one they had moved into first, in a garden, and he saw them open a gate, let it swing back, and go together into the house.
Ben was working things out. The house his mother had moved into away from the big house was small. He remembered her saying, ‘Big enough for me and Paul.’ Which he had understood as But not big enough for you too. If she had moved again, and to a bigger house, then that meant the others were there? Or some of them? He knew that they were all grown-up, but what he remembered was the family growing – children growing. In his mind was that other house, crammed with children, and with people. There wouldn’t be room for a lot of people in this house… He had to simmer down, become calm, lose the need to kill: he walked off around the block, came back, walked about some more, returned, and the front of this new house seemed as blank as an unfriendly face. Then he saw his father walk fast along the pavement. He could have seen Ben by raising his eyes, but he was frowning, preoccupied, and did not look up. Ben knew he could not loiter there for much longer. People noticed, they were always on the watch, even when you thought you saw only blank walls and windows, there were eyes when you did not expect them. He walked around the block again and this time saw Luke going into the house. With him was a small child: the idea that Luke was a father was too much to take in. He was thinking that the family were here, together – his family. He could go in and say, Here I am. And then? He knew they had split up because of him, they quarrelled about him. Only his mother had stood by him. She had come to that place where they kept hoses of freezing water coming at him and had taken him home… But the others had wanted him to stay there, wanted him dead.
It was getting dark. The street lights were out. Friendly night was here. But at night you did not linger too long on a pavement outside a house. He walked past the house, whose lights softly shone at him, Come in, and walked back again. He could hear the sounds that meant television. He could go in and sit down and watch the TV with them. And as he thought this he clearly saw how Paul would scream that he could not stay in the same room with him, he saw his father’s cold face that always seemed to be turned away from him, Ben. Suppose he just went in and said to his mother, ‘Please give me my birth certificate. Just give it to me and I’ll go away.’ But the rage was pumping up inside him, because all he could see was Paul, who hated him so much. The anger was making his fingers twist and curl; the need to be around that thin neck that would break and crack…
He walked away from his family, left it for ever, and the pain he felt cooled his anger. He felt wet damping his beard, and then running through it on his chin. He was so hungry again. He must be careful: night people were different from in the day. Better not risk sitting down at a table… He went to a McDonald’s, bought a fat juicy lump of meat, threw away the salad and the bun, and ate quickly as he walked. Then he was out of the town, and his face was set for London, for the old woman. He had four pounds left and it was not likely he would have luck again with a motorbike. He was so sad, so lonely, but the dark was his home, night was his place, and people did not look at you so dangerously at night – not, that is, if you weren’t in the same room with them. Now he was on a country road, and the sky over him was blurred and soft with stars that had thin cloud running across them. Near him was a little clump of trees, not a wood, but enough to shelter him. He found a bush, settled himself in it, and slept. Once he woke to hear a hedgehog puffing and snuffling near his feet. He could catch it as he sat. What stopped him was not the fear of the prickles in his palms, but a knowledge of prickles on his tongue: you could not bite into a hedgehog as you would a bird. He woke with the first cool breath of dawn. No birds: this was only a thin straggle of trees, and he could see that the houses began quite soon, he could hear traffic. He would reach his part of London about midday. Ahead were hours of his careful, wary walking – and his stomach, oh his stomach, how it begged for food. His hunger hurt and threatened him. It was not an easy hunger: the thin taste of bread or a bun could not satisfy it. It was a need for meat, and he smelled the rawness of blood, the reek of it: yet this hunger was dangerous to him. Sometimes, when he had gone into a butcher’s shop, pulled there by the smell, his body had seemed to engorge with wanting, and his arms stretched out of their own accord towards the meat. Once he had grabbed up a handful of chops, and stood gnawing them, the butcher’s back being turned, and then the sounds of crunching had made the man whip around – but Ben had run, run – and after that he did not go into these shops. Now he was thinking as he walked of how he could get his hands on meat without spending the four pounds.
His feet were taking him to – he stood outside the tall wire of a building site, looking down into the scene of piled wet earth, machines, men in hard hats. He had worked there for some days, taken on because of those shoulders and arms that could support girders and beams needing two or three men to lift them. The others had stood watching as he shoved and shouldered and lifted. He had wanted to join with them, their jokes, their talk, but did not know how to. He had never understood, for example, why the way he spoke was funnier than the way they did. Their eyes when they looked at him had been grave, wary. At the end of a week, pay day. These were all men working illegally for one reason or another, and they were paid less than half the union rate. But Ben had earned enough money to take to the old woman, and she had been pleased with him. Two more weeks… and a new man had arrived on the job and from the first he had needled Ben, taunted him, grunted and growled. Ben had not at first known that these were meant to be his sounds, nor had he at once understood when the man had pushed and jostled him, once dangerously, when Ben was standing high, streets far below, his feet straddled from beam to beam over space. The foreman had sharply intervened, but after that Ben had kept an eye on this youth, a grinning, careless, show-off redhead, and had tried to keep out of his way. Another week. The money had been paid out inside a little shelter the men used for moments of rest, or when it was raining too badly. He and the redhead had been last in the line to be paid, and this was how his enemy had planned it, for when Ben’s envelope was put into his hand, the young man had grabbed it from him and run off, grunting and scratching himself and crouching low and bounding up, and then again: Ben had known this was meant to be a monkey. He had visited the zoo, moving from cage to cage looking at beasts whose names he had been called, ape, baboon, pig-man, pongo, yeti. There was no yeti in the zoo, nor a pongo either, and he had wondered about them, for he knew he was looking for something like himself.
He had looked helplessly at the foreman, hoping he would protect him, and had seen him grinning, and had seen on the faces of the men standing about, their envelopes in their hands, that look, that grin. He had known he would not get help from them. He had worked a full week for nothing. He had been so full of murder that he had had to walk away from it, and had heard the foreman call after him, ‘If you’re here on Monday, there’ll be something for you.’ Meaning, not money, but work for those great shoulders of his that had saved them, the others, so much effort. And he was back on Monday, at first looking down into the site, hands on the wire, as if he had been inside it and not out, as if it were a cage, and down there were the men he had worked with, but the redhead had not been there. That was because he had grabbed Ben’s money and was afraid to come back. Ben had worked that week slowly, carefully, watching faces, watching eyes, moving out of their way, or positioning himself to take the big weights that were easy for him and not for them. And then, at the end of the week in his envelope had been half the money that was due him. He knew that was half what proper builders got, real workmen, who were not working illegally; but that half was now half again. The foreman had stared him out. It was not the usual foreman, who was sick: this man had come the day before yesterday off another job, to fill in. The men had stood around, watching, their faces kept expressionless. They had been expecting him to complain, make a fuss, even start a fight; they had had their eyes on his big arms and fists. But Ben knew better: he would get the worst of it. He had looked carefully around, from face to face, and had seen them waiting, and had seen, too, that one at least was sorry for him. This man had said something in a low voice to the new foreman, who had simply turned his back and walked away – with the money due to Ben in his own pocket.
On this site, at this place, Ben was owed forty pounds. Yes, the real foreman was there. He was standing a little apart from the others, who were uncoiling cable off a big spool. Ben went down. He saw that first one, and then another, of the men saw him and stopped. The one who had spoken up for him said something to the foreman. What Ben wanted was for that money simply to be given to him and then he could run – he was afraid of these men. Any single one of them he could knock down with a jerk of his elbow, a slap of his hand, but they could all set on him, and that was what made him shiver a little as he stood there. His hair was standing up all over his body. The foreman stood, thinking, then turned half away, pulled out a wad of money, counted some out, gave Ben twenty. And now they all looked to see what he would do, but he did nothing, only walked away. Yet it was here that he had earned money, and had hoped he would again. If he did work here he could expect one or all of them to take his money, and the foreman to cheat him. He turned at the foot of the path up out of the site and saw them uncoiling the cable, still watching him. Up he went, out of their way. He went to Mimosa House. The lift was silent, because it was out of order. Ben went bounding up the stairs, full of happiness because of seeing the old woman. But when he knocked on the door, there was no reply.
A woman opened her door across the landing, and said, ‘She’s gone to the doctor.’ She had the key to the flat, Ben knew that. She and the old woman were friends, and she had often seen Ben going in or out. Now she opened the door for Ben, saying, ‘She’ll be back soon. There’s no saying how long she’ll have to wait. She’s poorly. I told her she had to get to the doctor.’
Inside, the usually tidy room was disordered. For one thing, the bed had just been pulled up hastily. On it the cat started from sleep, its fur high. Ben did not rummage in the fridge: he hated the cold taste of food just taken out of it, and, too, he did not want to use the old woman’s food. He squatted on the bed, ignoring the cat, and looked out. He was waiting for a pigeon to come to the balcony. They often did. The cat turned its head to watch too. A yard apart, not looking at each other, they were united in waiting for whatever might come. The door to the balcony was not locked. Ben set it ajar. It bisected the tiny balcony. Then neither Ben nor the cat moved. At last a pigeon came, but to the wrong part, safe behind the door, and then, soon after, another, to the part where… Ben had leaped out, and the bird was in his hand. He was tearing off feathers when he heard the cat’s sound, which it always made when a bird was out there, or on the railing, a rusty, hungry noise. Ben ripped some flesh off the bird and flung it down. The cat crept out and ate. The blood was dripping from their mouths. Then there were only feathers blowing about, and some blood stains. The cat went back in. So did Ben. It was not enough, those few mouthfuls of flesh, but it was something, his stomach was appeased. He saw the cat’s eyes closing: it was trusting him enough to sleep. Ben curled up on the bed beside the cat, and when Mrs Biggs came in, towards evening, the two creatures were sleeping side by side on her bed.
She took it all in, some feathers clinging to the blood clots on the balcony, the stale smell of blood, that there were only a few inches between Ben’s back and the cat’s. She wasn’t well. She felt bad. Her heart hurt. And she was tired: at the end of a long wait at the doctor’s, among grumbling people, she had been given some pills. But what had she been expecting? – she scolded herself – a cure? She set packages down on the table, untied a scarf from her head, drank water from the tap, and then stood for a while looking down at her old big bed – at the cat, at Ben. She lay down along its edge, and watched the shadows come on the ceiling, and then it was dark. Ben slept his noisy, unhappy sleep. The cat was as neat and quiet as – a cat. The old woman dozed off, feeling her heart beat painfully in her side. She woke because Ben was awake, and pressing his back against her.
‘Ben,’ she said, into the dark. ‘I’m not well. I’m going to bed for a day or two to rest up.’ He made a sound that meant, I am listening. ‘Did you get the certificate?’ A silence from Ben, and something like a whimper. ‘Did you see your mother?’
‘I saw her. In the park.’
She already knew the answer but asked, ‘Did you speak to her?’ Ben moved against her side, and whimpered again. ‘I don’t know what to suggest next, Ben. I’d go with you to the place – you know, I told you about, where you get certificates, but I’m not well.’
‘I’ve got some money. I’ve got twenty pounds.’
‘That’s not going to get you far, Ben.’ He had known she would say that, and he agreed with her.
‘I’ll get some money.’
She did not ask how. She had been told the story of the building site, how he had been cheated. He would always be cheated, poor Ben, she knew that. And so did he.
When morning came she did not get off the bed, but lay there, breathing slowly and carefully. She said, ‘Ben, I want you to go to the bathroom, take off your clothes and wash yourself. You don’t smell good.’
Ben did as she said. He had not washed himself in this thorough way before, but he remembered what she did, and did the same. But now he had to put on the dirty clothes.
She said, ‘Find your old clothes. They’re in that cupboard. Take your new clothes to the launderette, and when you come back here you can put them on again.’
He knew about the launderette. ‘How do I get back in again, if you are in bed?’
‘The key’s on the table. And get some bread and something for you. And be careful, Ben.’
He knew that meant, Don’t steal, don’t let yourself be carried off into a rage, be on guard.
He did everything as she would have wanted. Then he went to a little shop and bought bread for her – the pale yeasty smell always made him feel a little nauseous – and some meat for himself, and, too, a tin of cat food. All this he did successfully, and let himself back in, and put on his clean clothes. It was mid-morning.
Mrs Biggs was sitting at the table, her hand at her side.
‘Make me a cup of tea, Ben.’
He did so.
‘And give the cat something.’
He opened the tin he had bought for the cat, and watched it crouch down to eat.
‘You’re a good boy, Ben,’ she said, and tears came into his eyes and she heard him give a sort of bark, which meant he wanted to say thank you to her, expressing his love and gratitude for those words, but he had never heard them, except from her. She almost put out her hand to stroke him as if he were a dog, but he was not a dog, not of that tribe.
She drank her tea, asked for some toast, and lay down again. She slept, the cat by her. There was Ben, in his clean clothes, full of energy and something like happiness because of that loving ‘You’re a good boy.’ He did not want to sleep, but lay on his futon and dozed, hoping she would wake, but she slept all night, and woke in the morning early. Again she asked for this and that, tea, an apple, food for the cat in its saucer. The neighbour came in, saw Ben there, carrying cups and plates into the kitchen, and was pleased for she had defended Ben to the other people on the landing, or who had seen him on the stairs. Now she could say that Ben was looking after Mrs Biggs.
There was a little conference by the bed. The old woman not wanting to get up was a new thing, which the neighbour understood very well, but who was going to look after her? Mrs Biggs asked her to get her pension, for she felt too poorly and – she was apologetic – empty the cat’s dirt box. Both women understood that Ben could not do this: the mere idea of it – impossible. Even though the cat’s fur was quiet, and she no longer sat with her eyes fixed on Ben. When the neighbour returned with Mrs Biggs’ pension she laid the money on the table, and said, looking at Ben: ‘That’s not enough for more than her and the cat.’
‘He’s been using his money to buy me things,’ said the old woman, but they all knew what the situation was.
‘That’s all right then,’ said the neighbour, and went off to spread the news that the yeti was looking after Mrs Biggs as if he were her son.
And so that time went, a happy time, the best in Ben’s whole life, looking after the old woman, even taking her clothes and her bedclothes to the launderette, cooking up dishes from frozen to feed her – but he usually finished them, for she ate so little. But it could not last, because all this time the money was going, going, and he soon had none left. If he wanted to stay there, with Mrs Biggs and the cat, then he would have to get more money and he did not know how. The neighbour, bringing in the pension money, carefully did not look at Ben, and he knew it was a criticism. The old woman did not criticise him, but lay and dozed, or sat and dozed, her hand so often pressing on her heart, saying, ‘Ben, we could both do with a cup of tea, I am sure.’
He was hungry, for he was trying to eat as little as he could. It could not go on. He told her he was going to see about a job, and saw her sad little smile. ‘Be careful, Ben,’ she said. And Ben left: he had no home in this world.

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