Another part of the wood Read Free Page A

don’t think I’ll bother, if it’s all the same to you. You go and get settled in and I’ll wait here for you.’ Deliberately
she leaned her head against the back of the rocking chair and closed her eyes.
    Without further comment Joseph left the hut, passing Kidney on the path. Meekly, unquestioningly, the youth turned about,
chin down to the edge of his load, and followed him. Lastly Roland ran out of the door, leaving Balfour alone in the hut with
Dotty. For a moment he stood where he was, waiting to see if she would speak to him; but she didn’t, so he sought refuge in
the kitchen, willing George to return and deliver him. As he ran water into the tin kettle a spider moved across the bottom
of the sink. He removed the lid from the kettle and slopped water against the animal. Dismayed at its clinging persistence,
he put down the kettle on the draining board and with the edge of the washing-up bowl rammed the spider into the plug hole
and turned the tap violently.
    When Joseph reached the stream at the bottom of the valley, Roland immediately wanted his red boat to sail in the water. After
an argument, Joseph unzipped the bag handed to him by his ex-wife in Liverpool and ferreted out the required toy.
    With instructions as to how to find Hut 4 and how not to fall in the water, he and Kidney continued their climb up the path
and left the child to play. With only Kidney to care for, Joseph withdrew into himself and strode up the rough slope, yawning
repeatedly. At the hut he kicked open the door with his foot and put his cases down on the floor, instructing Kidney where
to put the grocery box and the wicker basket, in a voice perfectly polite, his body active and his mind empty of everything
save the business of settling in. Expertly and tidily he laid out the luggage
and snapping the locks of the pigskin cases told Kidney to unpack his clothing.
    The youth began slowly to do as he was told. He laid his pullover down on the narrow settee and stared at it. Empty of him
and newly washed, it looked too small. His mother had knitted some part of every night for almost three winter months. Occasionally
the ball of wool had fallen from her knee and rolled away under the sofa and then he had gone down on hands and knees to retrieve
it for her. He would press his head sideways against the frill of the sofa and let his hand crawl in the darkness over the
soft pile of the carpet. Grunting with exertion, he would place the wool back on his mother’s lap and sit again in the armchair,
hands still curved. The nights his mother had gone out to her bridge, or to cocktail parties with his father, the knitting
lay pierced by its steel skewers on the top of the television set. He had looked at the pictures moving on the screen and
up at the woollen shape, and sometimes it seemed as if the flickering images were just an extension of the needles flashing
and his pullover was growing without his mother’s help. When the compulsion to touch became too strong, he would go upstairs
to the bathroom and clean his teeth. Once he hadn’t been able to and had pulled at the knitting needles. Under his fingers
the stitches began to dissolve away. His mother was angry and threatened never to finish his present, so he stopped watching
television the nights she went out. At Christmas when he had unwrapped it from the patterned paper he had felt only disappointment
at its fat completion. Here in the hut with Joseph he began to feel protective towards it again. He folded the pullover carefully.
Once he glanced up to see if Joseph was watching him. When he saw he wasn’t, his eyes filled with tears. Frowning, he tied
the arms in a knot and bundled it into a drawer.
    ‘Not that drawer,’ said Joseph. He rose and strode over to the chest of drawers, pulled out the offending jumper and threw
it back on to the settee. Bending down to finish his unpacking of the wicker basket, he said by way of explanation: ‘That
drawer is
for Roland. Next to mine. Me