Shuttlecock Read online

  FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, MARCH 1992

  Copyright © 1981 by Graham Swift

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published by Allen Lane, Great Britain, in 1981.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Swift, Graham, 1949–

  Shuttlecock / Graham Swift.—1st Vintage International ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82978-8

  I. Title.

  PR6069.W47S5 1992

  823’.914—dc20 91-50622

  Author photograph © Mark Douet

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Other Books by This Author

  A Note About the Author

  [1]

  Today I remembered my hamster: my pet hamster, Sammy, a gift for my tenth birthday. It is over twenty years since my tenth birthday, since my hamster came to live in our house, but today I remembered it as if it still existed. I remembered its blond fur, its pink nose, its jet-black eyes which seemed, under certain circumstances, to be about to spill, like drops of ink, from its head. I remembered the sunflower seeds and bits of carrot we fed it and which, out of some primitive, needless instinct, it would cram into its pouches and unload about its cage in never-to-be-eaten piles. I remembered its noiseless feet, its stump of a tail; the way when I took it out of its cage for exercise it would never run across the room but always round the edges, following the skirting-board, in little furtive darts, between which it would freeze, one paw raised, head poised, in apprehension. And I remembered the day when my parents (who had already thrown Sammy’s corpse into the kitchen boiler) said: ‘We’re sorry, there’s something we’ve got to tell you.…’

  Why should I have thought of these things? They say you only recall what is pleasant and you only forget what you choose not to remember. Perhaps. But do I say ‘remember’? This was not so much a memory as a pang.…

  You see, I used to torment my hamster. I was cruel to Sammy. It wasn’t a case of wanting to play with him, or train him, or study how he behaved. I tortured him. Not at the very beginning. I loved the tiny thing that the man at the pet shop took from a warm heap of its fellows and installed in an aluminium cage for us. I wondered anxiously over the pale huddle of fur which for several days did nothing but whimper, cower and coyly excrete in its new home. But at some time after Sammy’s arrival I made the discovery that this creature which I loved and pitied was also at my mercy.

  When did the torturing begin? I used to turn my hamster on its back and pin it down with a finger across the belly while it made frantic wriggles to be free. I simulated a bird of prey, holding my hand two feet above it like a claw, while it crouched, mesmerized, in a corner. I cupped it inside my closed hands with scarcely space for air to enter, and then, slowly, made a gap between my thumb and finger – not enough for it to extricate itself, but enough for it to squeeze its head through in straining, strangulated efforts. Once, I opened our oven door.…

  And what was all this for? Will you believe me if I say it was all, still, out of love and pity? For love and pity hadn’t disappeared. I needed only new means of eliciting them. Love ought to be simple, straightforward, but it isn’t. All these cruelties were no more than a way of making remorse possible, of making my heart melt, of earning the doubtful luxury of putting my hamster away at the end of the day, a nervous jelly in its cage, and saying, my voice tight with contrition: ‘I didn’t mean it, Sammy. I didn’t mean it. I love you, Sammy. Really.…’

  And today, twenty-two years later, coming home in the Tube, I went through it all again, saying to myself: I terrorized my hamster, I tormented a living thing. And I never …

  But what made me think of these things?

  It can have no connexion with the other outstanding event of the day: learning I am going to get Quinn’s job. It all happened just before lunch. For the first time I can remember, Quinn was actually civil to me, even amiable. He called me up to his office on the pretext of looking over a report. He was his usual disagreeable, cantankerous self. And then, as he shut the report file, he came out with it. I’d never have thought it possible. It’s what I’ve always wanted, of course – longed for – and even in some ways, I think, deserved. But I’d never have thought I had the slightest chance. I am the most senior amongst the assistant staff – but they don’t always promote on seniority alone; they bring in people from outside. Quinn has a big say in the matter, and I’ve always thought that that old bastard had it in for me in no uncertain fashion. I would be the last person he’d want to see sitting in his seat. But this morning he closed the file and said quite casually: ‘Oh, before you go, Prentis. This isn’t definite, you understand – off the record and unofficial – but I think when I leave at the end of the summer you’ll be taking over my place here.’ He adjusted his glasses with a finger and thumb, and looked up at me through them. He has grey, mobile, darting eyes which his glasses sometimes hide and sometimes enlarge as if you’re being looked at under a magnifying glass. ‘You realize,’ he said, ‘for the time being, this is strictly between you and me.’ Then he turned, with deliberate nonchalance, it seemed to me, to get on with his paper-work. I was so astounded I forgot to pick up the file I had brought in. As I reached the door he called me back. ‘You’d better take this.’ He tapped the file in a strange, slow way ‘We don’t want things to get mislaid, do we?’

  And he actually smiled.

  I haven’t told Marian yet. It’s probably best, of course, to keep quiet about it until I hear something certain. There’s no saying what games Quinn might be playing. But there’s something else, something which I’m not sure I can explain, which stops me from telling Marian. Why shouldn’t I tell my own wife, after all, about even a vague hint about my future prospects? It has something to do with the way I can never act simply and straightforwardly. Or about having thought about my hamster on the way home. When I got in today it was just an ordinary Monday evening and none of my family could have known that Daddy’s promotion was on the cards. On Monday evenings I am particularly bad-tempered. My family knows it. I am bad-tempered most evenings, but Monday evenings are the worst. On Mondays I work late and don’t get in till nearly eight. When I arrive, Marian comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea-towel and brushing the hair from her eyes, and says, ‘Hello, darling,’ sheepishly, as if she has just woken up from some day-dream and she is surprised that I have come home at all. And the kids, who are glued to the television in the living-room, don’t do anything.

  Tonight they were watching The Bionic Man – or something like that, since there’s a craze at the moment for films with heroes who are actually admired because they are
half robots. I know it’s probably my fault – because I’m the one who rents the television – but I don’t like the way those two boys spend all their time stuck in front of it. It’s not right; it’s not the way children should grow up. I’ve been wanting for some time to get rid of that cursed little box. When we first got a television, years ago, we never thought of the boys, who were very young. It was more a present for ourselves, to relax with when we were tired – Marian after coping with the kids and I after work (I had just started, about then, in Quinn’s section). But we soon discovered that neither of us really cared for TV. When I’m at home I like three things: reading and sleeping and, better than either of these, having sex; and Marian likes pottering around the house, tending her ferns and cactuses – that is, in between having sex – which I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like any more, as I do. So, when the boys grew up, they started to usurp the television and establish special claims over it. And now it has become the focal point of their lives. Days have to be arranged according to the programmes they want to watch. Their sliding scale of bed-times, devised according to the best child-rearing manuals, has long since been abandoned to the demands of the air-waves. All this is bad enough; but when they can’t take their eyes off the screen to say ‘Hello’ to their own father – that is too much.

  I kissed Marian briskly and brushed past her. After all, she is at home when the kids come in from school – she could stop this TV nonsense. I stood in the doorway to the living-room. ‘Hello!’ I said, and then again, more loudly, ‘Hello!’ Martin was sitting, both feet drawn up, cross-legged, in an armchair. In his lap was a plate with two or three digestive biscuits. He turned to look at me, actually biting, as he did so, on one of the biscuits. Peter lay, stomach down, on the floor, head propped in hands, feet in the air. He twitched his bottom.

  I know they don’t look up to me. That is the nub of the matter. My own sons don’t look up to their father. They look up to the Bionic Man. The Bionic Man radiates Californian confidence. The Bionic Man performs impossible feats, solves impossible riddles and bears no relation to anything natural. But they look up to him, not their father.

  I give them three seconds. Then I cross the room, passing between them, switch off the television and in the same movement round upon them.

  ‘Can’t you give your Dad a hello when he comes in from work?’

  Almost instantly they chime, in unison, ‘Hello, Dad,’ as if this will make me turn on the television again and go away.

  I glower at them. I know I am going to go through my whole performance; after the angry indignation, the mocking lecture.

  ‘What do you think this is?’ I pat the top of the television. ‘A machine, an object. It’s full of wires and valves. And what do you think this is?’ I touch my own breast. ‘This is your Dad. Can you spot the difference?’

  Peter, my younger son, aged eight, stifles a giggle and lowers his head.

  ‘Right! Just for that, my boy –!’

  I move suddenly forward to pull Peter up from the floor. I know I am about to act like an ogre, a madman – it’s happened before (when did all this begin?) but I can’t do anything about it. He tries to squirm free but I catch him by the collar. There is a moment when he swings obliquely, dangling in my grip, his sandalled feet not yet having found a footing on the floor, and just at this point, for some reason, I get a sudden mental vision of myself sitting in Quinn’s leather chair. At the same time I glimpse Marian standing in the doorway. She has been watching my anger with a resigned, long-suffering expression – she’s seen all this before too – but when I seize on Peter she bites her lip and clenches the tea-towel in her hand.

  ‘Don’t you smirk at your father when he’s telling you off!’

  Peter is on his feet now. I have my hands on his shoulders and I’m giving him a good, vigorous shaking. His little protuberant eyes bounce back and forwards on the end of his neck.

  I finish with him, though he goes on shaking even when I’ve released him. Martin hasn’t moved; he has a hand guiltily covering his biscuits.

  ‘There’ll be no more television for either of you! This evening or any evening! That’s final. Do you hear? I said, do you –’

  From both of them comes a thin, compliant ‘Ye-es.’

  And then, again, I know what is going to happen next. I can predict it like a scene in a play. Peter is going to cry. Not helpless tears, of shock and distress – though that is how they will seem, and they will be real enough tears – but tears that are quite perfectly timed and calculated. Both he and Martin know that I am easily beguiled by tears. I will even take back what I have said and say sorry, for tears. Underneath everything, they know that I am essentially a weak man. That’s just the trouble. They know that when I rave at them and wallop them it’s because I’m weak. That’s why they don’t say Hello and turn to look at me when I come in. So all this show of strength means nothing.

  Sure enough, Peter starts to blubber.

  ‘Huh!’ I say. ‘The Bionic Man never cries, does he?’

  Peter’s tears actually check slightly at this. But I have to think of something fast to avoid being swayed by them.

  ‘Now, shall I tell you what you are going to do, right this very instant? You are going to go out into the garden – on this nice, warm evening – and you are going to – dig out all the weeds in the far flowerbed –’ (even as I say this I remember that Marian has carried out precisely this task the previous afternoon) ‘– no, you are going to dig out all the stones, all the large stones, in all the flowerbeds, and put them in a neat pile by the compost heap. Do you understand? Do you – ?’

  ‘Ye-es.’

  ‘And you say Hello to me when I come in – okay?’

  ‘Ye-es.’

  ‘Well out you go then!’

  And later, if they had dared and wished to, the boys could have seen Marian and me, through the kitchen window, arguing like sparring fish in a tank. They would have seen me jerking my hands and pointing my finger and Marian clamping her hand over the top of her head, as though to hold it in place, the way she does when she argues. We nearly always argue after my outbursts with the kids. It’s not so much that Marian takes issue with me for letting fly at them (she gave that up a long time ago) but that my tirades against the boys never seem to get used up or have sufficient effect with them alone and have to spill over onto Marian.

  ‘We don’t live at the top of a concrete block, do we? Or underground,’ I add for some reason. ‘We live in a house, with a garden. There’s a common just up the road. Grass, trees. It’s spring, isn’t it?’ I wave a hand towards the window. ‘Warm weather. So why do they have to sit in front of the television all the time?’

  ‘Yes! Yes! I’m not arguing with you! I’m not your children, am I? Ask them. Find out from them!’

  ‘It’s unnatural.’

  ‘All right. Ask them. You’re in charge.’

  Through the window, Martin and Peter are crouched, backs half turned towards us, at the edge of one of the flowerbeds. It is already getting dark. They can probably hear Marian and me arguing. Our garden, like the gardens of the other houses in the road, is small – more a sort of extended back-yard. And it has a wall all the way round it so that anyone in it, viewed from the house, looks confined. Martin has a red polo-neck sweater and Peter a brown one and they both wear identical child’s blue jeans. They seem to be going through some strange semblance of activity, half earnest, half ironic. There are no large stones in our well-dug flowerbeds. They are looking for these mysterious large stones.

  ‘Tomorrow morning I want you to go down to that rental place and ask them to take our television back.’

  ‘Oh come on!’

  ‘I mean it. You do it. I thought you weren’t arguing with me. I meant what I said tonight. You stop the payments and get them to take back the television.’

  ‘I’m not going to do that.’

  ‘Oh yes you are,’ I say, grabbing Marian’s arm and poking a finger almost into her f
ace. ‘Yes you bloody well are!’ Her eyes bob just like Peter’s.

  And I’m suddenly astounded that all this is so predictable, and yet unpredictable too. Coming home and being bad-tempered and aggressive. As if every night I mean to be different. And tonight I had actually said to myself: a warm evening at the end of April; my interview with Quinn; my penitence on the train. I will say to Marian, ‘Get an old crust of stale bread. Come with me. We’re going to feed the ducks on Clapham Common.’ You see, underneath, I am a soft-hearted man. I wouldn’t even have minded if the kids had wanted to stay in watching television. So much the better. I’ve never told Marian about Quinn and what’s going on at our office. There might have been ducklings on the pond, following their mothers – line astern. We’d have stood and thrown bread in the water. Marian would have been baffled. And perhaps I might have told her about my promotion.

  But our life never has these tender moments. It’s been like this for years.

  [2]

  I work in an office five minutes’ walk from Charing Cross Underground, which is really a sub-department of the police. I hasten to add, I am not a policeman. I am more a sort of specialized clerk, an archivist. Our department has little to do with the day-to-day activities of the police – the police as the public think of them, the men in blue and conspicuous plain clothes. And yet it is an important, even an indispensable department.

  Have you ever wondered what happens to the records of crimes that were committed long ago? Of police inquiries that took place up to a hundred years, or more, in the past? More to the point, have you ever wondered what happens to the records of crimes, or the evidence of possible crimes, relating to recent years, which because of some factor or other – often the death of the party or parties involved – have ceased to be acted upon? A suspected child-molester, for example, who commits suicide before proceedings can be taken, so that, after the inquest, the case is officially closed. Or an almost-successful embezzler who, being discovered after years milking the company funds, succumbs to a fortuitous coronary. All such records are the business of our department. In our vaults you will find the memorials of century-old murders, arsons, thefts and frauds – the delight of professional criminologists who, admitted only by the strictest permit, sit sometimes all day, at little lamp-lit reading desks, working through sheaves of yellowed documents. But you will find also – or you would find, if Quinn ever allowed you to – information relating to the living; information sometimes of a nefarious and inflammatory nature, the subjects of which would, to say the least, feel uneasy if they knew such information were stored, no matter how discreetly and inertly, in a police building. But it is not true – in case you are beginning to draw in your nostrils – that we keep files on people as such. Ours are distinct from ordinary police criminal records, where the criminal history of any person possessing one can quickly be referred to. We deal solely with individual cases, and ones which have been formally closed. In the official phrase, with ‘dead crimes’.