‘Two!’
No one else said anything. The boy kept his eyes on the lighter. The little man held the chopper up in the air and he too was watching the lighter.
‘Three!’
‘Four!’
‘Five!’
‘Six!’
‘Seven!’ Obviously it was one of those lighters that worked. The flint gave a big spark and the wick was the right length. I watched the thumb snapping the top down on to the flame. Then a pause. Then the thumb raising the top once more. This was an all-thumb operation. The thumb did everything. I took a breath, ready to say eight. The thumb flicked the wheel. The flint sparked. The little flame appeared.
‘Eight!’ I said, and as I said it the door opened. We all turned and we saw a woman standing in the doorway, a small, black-haired woman, rather old, who stood there for about two seconds then rushed forward, shouting, ‘Carlos! Carlos!’ She grabbed his wrist, took the chopper from him, threw it on the bed, took hold of the little man by the lapels of his white suit and began shaking him very vigorously, talking to him fast and loud and fiercely all the time in some Spanish-sounding language. She shook him so fast you couldn’t see him any more. He became a faint, misty, quickly moving outline, like the spokes of a turning wheel.
Then she slowed down and the little man came into view again and she hauled him across the room and pushed him backwards on to one of the beds. He sat on the edge of it blinking his eyes and testing his head to see if it would still turn on his neck.
‘I am sorry,’ the woman said. ‘I am so terribly sorry that this should happen.’ She spoke almost perfect English.
‘It is too bad,’ she went on. ‘I suppose it is really my fault. For ten minutes I leave him alone to go and have my hair washed and I come back and he is at it again.’ She looked sorry and deeply concerned.
The boy was untying his hand from the table. The English girl and I stood there and said nothing.
‘He is a menace,’ the woman said. ‘Down where we live at home he has taken altogether forty-seven fingers from different people, and he has lost eleven cars. In the end they threatened to have him put away somewhere. That’s why I brought him up here.’
‘We were only having a little bet,’ mumbled the little man from the bed.
‘I suppose he bet you a car,’ the woman said.
‘Yes,’ the boy answered. ‘A Cadillac’
‘He has no car. It’s mine. And that makes it worse,’ she said, ‘that he should bet you when he has nothing to bet with. I am ashamed and very sorry about it all.’ She seemed an awfully nice woman.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘then here’s the key of your car.’ I put it on the table.
‘We were only having a little bet,’ mumbled the little man.
‘He hasn’t anything left to bet with,’ the woman said. ‘He hasn’t a thing in the world. Not a thing. As a matter of fact I myself won it all from him a long while ago. It took time, a lot of time, and it was hard work, but I won it all in the end.’ She looked up at the boy and she smiled, a slow sad smile, and she came over and put out a hand to take the key from the table.
I can see it now, that hand of hers; it had only one finger on it, and a thumb.
The Soldier
It was one of those nights that made him feel he knew what it was like to be a blind man: not the shadow of an image for his eyes to discern, not even the forms of the trees visible against the sky.
Out of the darkness he became aware of small rustling noises in the hedge, the breathing of a horse some distance away in the field, the soft thud of a hoof as it moved its foot; and once he heard the rush of a bird flying past him low overhead.
‘Jock,’ he said, speaking loud. ‘We’ll go home now.’ And he turned and began to walk back up the slope of the lane, the dog pulling ahead, showing the way in the dark.
It must be nearly midnight, he
thought. That meant that soon it would be tomorrow. Tomorrow was worse than today. Tomorrow was the worst of all because it was going to become today – and today was now.
Today had not been very nice, especially that business with the splinter.
Stop it, he told himself. There isn’t any sense thinking about it. It doesn’t do anyone any good thinking about things like that. Think about something else for a change. You can kick out a dangerous thought, you know, if you put another in its place. Go right back as far as you can go. Let’s have some memories of sweet days. The seaside holidays in the summer, wet sand and red buckets and shrimping nets and the slippery seaweedy rocks and the small clear pools and sea anemones and snails and mussels and sometimes one grey translucent shrimp hovering deep down in the beautiful green water.
But how could that splinter have got into the sole of his foot without him feeling it?