Free The Bell-Boy by James Hamilton-Paterson Page A

But the cats are nearly wild. They live in the stables.’
    ‘No pigs, cows, goats?’
    ‘Oh, I see. We’ve got twelve goats and twenty-one sheep.’
    Laki looked up. This was a good answer. The richest person in his village had four goats and a huge sow that had to be taken to a neighbour’s for mating. One year after a particularly good fishing season when he had lost no nets his father had spent his tiny reserve of cash on a kid which, although it had grown into a plump nanny, proved barren. For a season it had wandered up and down the beach, in and out of the drawn-up boats, browsing on fish entrails and banana peels and whatever daily ration of the villagers’ excrement had not already gone to crabs, pigs and dogs. No billy had approached it with more than cousinly interest, so even they had known. In exasperation his father had cut her throat and they and their friends had eaten well for several days. It had always been Laki’s dream to have his own goat, let alone a flock of twelve. The twenty-one sheep sounded additionally attractive but to tell the truth he had never seen a sheep and was a little hazy as to what they looked like. He remembered seeing a book once – there had been one at theelementary school up the coast – and in this book had been pictures of various animals, some of which he recognised. He rather thought that sheep had been quite like goats. Presumably this boy’s father would be back in Italy, looking after them on the mountain. Then he recalled his saying there were only the three of them. ‘Your father is dead?’
    ‘No,’ said Jason. ‘Not as far as I know. He went off with a woman.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Laki wisely. Where he came from it would have been thought most dishonourable for a man to desert his family. By one means or another most men accommodated themselves, combining fun with honour. Laki presumed this to be merely a basic living skill for any man, but it was evidently one this boy’s father had not acquired. What a passive creature his mother must be to have allowed such a thing, content to accept disgrace for herself and comparative poverty for her children! If she had only taken a knife to him! But maybe she had. At any rate she did have golden hair and a kind face as well as smelling nice. The most extraordinary fantasy came to him then: no, not exactly a fantasy since that implied a clear imagined picture. This was more a sense that here a slot opened up, a space into which somebody might fit himself, though he stopped short of giving that person either a name or a role. ‘You are sad without father?’
    ‘I don’t know. Why, should I be?’
    ‘But mother sad. Very sad and cold at night.’
    ‘My mother’s not …’ began Jason distantly. ‘She’s a different sort of person. You’d have to know her to understand what I mean. She’s interested in the Community, in spiritual things, in the Teacher. He’s the Swami, you know.’
    ‘Swami in Italy too you have? Here in Malomba are many swamis.’ But another matter about this peculiar family urgently needed clearing up. ‘Your sister, she is marry?’
    ‘Zoe?’ asked Jason in amazement. ‘No, she’s only justfifteen. Anyway, I can’t imgaine anyone wanting to marry her.’
    This news greatly cheered Laki, who had long since stopped cutting rubber. ‘Your sister very beautiful girl,’ he said fervently. ‘She the beautifullest girl I am seeing always.’
    ‘Zoe is?’ Though, considering it while Laki returned to his snipping, he supposed she might be. It was always so hard to separate how people looked from what one knew about them. Surely when one thought about people it was their words one remembered best, the things they said and the tone they used and the expression in their eyes, not whether their hair was blonde or their tits stuck out. It was especially difficult when talking about a member of the family to say, yes, probably she wasn’t bad-looking. Instead he asked, ‘Where’s your