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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 ru
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 fu
He had looked helplessly at the foreman, hoping he would protect him, and had seen him gri