Granger pointed. ‘One of them’s up on the platform.’
The younger brother had climbed on to the rim, was shouting down like an umpire at the antics of two other boys, one his brother, the other Tom Juranda, a tall broad-shouldered youth in a space cadet’s jerkin. They were standing at the edge of the fish-pool, stones and salt blocks in their hands, hurling them into the pool.
Leaving Granger, Holliday sprinted on ahead, shouting at the top of his voice. Too preoccupied to hear him, the boys continued to throw their missiles into the pool, while the younger Merryweather egged them on from the platform above. Just before Holliday reached them Tom Juranda ran a few yards along the bank and began to kick the mud-wall into the air, then resumed his target throwing.
‘Juranda! Get away from there!’ Holliday bellowed. ‘Put those stones down!’
He reached Juranda as the youth was about to hurl a brick-sized lump of salt into the pool, seized him by the shoulder and flung him round, knocking the salt out of his hand into a shower of damp crystals, then lunged at the elder Merryweather boy, kicking him away.
The pool had been drained. A deep breach had been cut through the bank and the water had poured out into the surrounding gulleys and pools. Down in the centre of the basin, in a litter of stones and spattered salt, was the crushed but still wriggling body of the dog-fish, twisting itself helplessly in the bare inch of water that remained. Dark red blood poured from wounds in its body, staining the salt.
Holliday hurled himself at Juranda, shook the youth savagely by the shoulders.
‘Juranda! Do you realize what you’ve done, you — ‘Exhausted, Holliday released him and staggered down into the centre of the pool, kicked away the stones and stood looking at the fish twitching at his feet.
‘Sorry, Holliday,’ the older Merryweather boy said tentatively behind him. ‘We didn’t know it was your fish.’
Holliday waved him away, then let his arms fall limply to his sides. He felt numbed and baffled, unable to resolve his anger and frustration.
Tom Juranda began to laugh, and shouted something derisively. Their tension broken, the bays turned and ran off together across the dunes towards their car, yelling and playing catch with each other, mimicking Holliday’s outrage.
Granger let them go by, then walked across to the pool, wincing when he saw the empty basin.
‘Holliday,’ he called. ‘Come on.’
Holliday shook his head, staring at the beaten body of the fish.
Granger stepped down the bank to him. Sirens hooted in the distance as the Buick roared off. ‘Those damn children.’ He took Holliday gently by the arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘But it’s not the end of the world.’
Bending down, Holliday reached towards the fish, lying still now, the mud around it slick with blood. His hands hesitated, then retreated.
‘Nothing we can do, is there?’ he said impersonally.
Granger examined the fish. Apart from the large wound in its side and the flattened skull the skin was intact. ‘Why not have it stuffed?’ he suggested seriously.
Holliday stared at him incredulously, his face contorting. For a moment he said nothing. Then, almost berserk, he shouted: ‘Have it stuffed? Are you crazy? Do you think I want to make a dummy of myself, fill my own head with straw?’
Turning on his heel, he shouldered past Granger and swung himself roughly out of the pool.
The Overloaded Man
Faulkner was slowly going insane.
After breakfast he waited impatiently in the lounge while his wife tidied up in the kitchen. She would be gone within two or three minutes, but for some reason he always found the short wait each morning almost unbearable. As he drew the Venetian blinds and readied the reclining chair on the veranda he listened to Julia moving about efficiently. In the same strict sequence she stacked the cups and plates in the dishwasher, slid the pot roast for that evening’s dinner into the auto-cooker and selected the alarm, lowered the air-conditioner, refrigerator and immersion heater settings, switched open the oil storage manifolds for the delivery tanker that afternoon, and retracted her section of the garage door.
Faulkner followed the sequence with admiration, counting off each successive step as the dials clicked and snapped.
You ought to be in B-52’s, he thought, or in the control house of a petrochemicals plant. In fact Julia worked in the personnel section at the Clinic, and no doubt spent all day in the same whirl of efficiency, stabbing buttons marked ‘Jones’, ‘Smith’, and ‘Brown’, shunting paraplegics to the left, paranoids to the right.
She stepped into the lounge and came over to him, the standard executive product in brisk black suit and white blouse.
‘Aren’t you going to the school today?’ she asked.
Faulkner shook his head, played with some papers on the desk. ‘No, I’m still on creative reflection. Just for this week. Professor Harman thought I’d been taking too many classes and getting stale.’
She nodded, looking at him doubtfully. For three weeks now he had been lying around at home, dozing on the veranda, and she was beginning to get suspicious. Sooner or later, Faulkner realized, she would find out, but by then he hoped to be out of reach. He longed to tell her the truth, that two months ago he had resigned from his job as a lecturer at the Business School and had no intention of ever going back. She’d get a damn big surprise when she discovered they had almost expended his last pay cheque, might even have to put up with only one car. Let her work, he thought, she earns more than I did anyway.
With an effort Faulkner smiled at her. Get out! his mind screamed, but she still hovered around him indecisively.
‘What about your lunch? There’s no—’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Faulkner cut in quickly, watching the clock. ‘I gave up eating six months ago. You have lunch at the Clinic.’
Even talking to her had become an effort. He wished they could communicate by means of notes; had even bought two scribble pads for this purpose. However, he had never quite been able to suggest that she use hers, although he did leave messages around for her, on the pretext that his mind was so intellectually engaged that talking would break up his thought trains.
Oddly enough, the idea of leaving her never seriously occurred to him. Such an escape would prove nothing. Besides, he had an alternative plan.
‘You’ll be all right?’ she asked, still watching him warily.
‘Absolutely,’ Faulkner told her, maintaining the smile. It felt like a full day’s work.
Her kiss was quick and functional, like the automatic peck of some huge bottle-topping machine. The smile was still on his face as she reached the door. When she had gone he let it fade slowly, then found himself breathing again and gradually relaxed, letting the tension drain down through his arms and legs. For a few minutes he wandered blankly around the empty house, then made his way into the lounge again, ready to begin his serious work.
His programme usually followed the same course. First, from the centre drawer of his desk he took a small alarm clock, fitted with a battery and wrist strap. Sitting down on the veranda, he fastened the strap to his wrist, wound and set the clock and placed it on the table next to him, binding his arm to the chair so that there was no danger of dragging the clock onto the floor.
Ready now, he lay back and surveyed the scene in front of him.
Menninger Village, or the ‘Bin’ as it was known locally, had been built about ten years earlier as a self-contained housing unit for the graduate staff of the Clinic and their families. In all there were some sixty houses in the development, each designed to fit into a particular architectonic niche, preserving its own identity from within and at the same time merging into the organic unity of the whole development. The object of the architects, faced with the task of compressing a great number of small houses into a four-acre site, had been, firstly, to avoid producing a collection of identical hutches, as in most housing estates, and secondly, to provide a showpiece for a major psychiatric foundation which would serve as a model for the corporate living units of the future.