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Minds weren t pictures at an exhibition, all numbered, and hung in
order of influence, one marked  Cunning , the next,
 Impressionable . They were scrawls; they were sprawling splashes
of graffiti, unpredictable, unconfinable.
And little boy Lacey? He was written on water.
Classes began the next day, in a heat so oppressive it turned
the workshop into an oven by eleven. But the boys responded
quickly to Redman s straight dealing. They recognized in him a
man they could respect without liking. They expected no favours,
and received none. It was a stable arrangement.
Redman found the staff on the whole less communicative than
the boys. An odd-ball bunch, all in all. Not a strong heart amongst
them he decided. The routine of Tetherdowne, its rituals of
classification, of humiliation, seemed to grind them into a common
gravel. Increasingly he found himself avoiding conversation with
his peers. The workshop became a sanctuary, a home from home,
smelling of newly cut wood and bodies.
It was not until the following Monday that one of the boys
mentioned the farm.
Nobody had told him there was a farm in the grounds of the
Centre, and the idea struck Redman as absurd.
 Nobody much goes down there, said Creeley, one of the
worst woodworkers on God s earth.  It stinks.
General laughter.
 All right, lads, settle down.
The laughter subsided, laced with a few whispered jibes.
 Where is this farm, Creeley?
 It s not even a farm really, sir, said Creeley, chewing his
tongue (an incessant routine).  It s just a few huts. Stink, they do
sir. Especially now.
 He pointed out of the window to the wilderness beyond the
playing field. Since he d last looked out at the sight, that first day
with Leverthal, the wasteland had ripened in the sweaty heat,
ranker with weeds than ever. Creeley pointed out a distant brick
wall, all but hidden behind a shield of shrubs.
 See it, sir?
 Yes, I see it.
 That s the sty, sir.
Another round of sniggers.
 What s so funny? he wheeled on the class. A dozen heads
snapped down to their work.
 I wouldn t go down there sir. It s high as a fucking kite.
Creeley wasn t exaggerating. Even in the relative cool of the
late afternoon the smell wafting off the farm was stomach turning.
Redman just followed his nose across the field and past the out-
houses. The buildings he glimpsed from the workshop window
were coming out of hiding. A few ramshackle huts thrown up out of
corrugated iron and rotting wood, a chicken run, and the brick-built
sty were all the farm could offer. As Creeley had said, it wasn t
really a farm at all. It was a tiny domesticated Dachau; filthy and
forlorn. Somebody obviously fed the few prisoners: the hens, the
half dozen geese, the pigs, but nobody seemed bothered to clean
them out. Hence that rotten smell. The pigs particularly were living
in a bed of their own ordure, islands of dung cooked to perfection
in the sun, peopled with thousands of flies.
The sty itself was divided into two separate compartments,
divided by a high brick wall. In the forecourt of one a small, mottled
pig lay on its side in the filth, its flank alive with ticks and bugs.
Another, smaller, pig could be glimpsed in the gloom of the interior,
lying on shit-thick straw. Neither showed any interest in Redman.
 The other compartment seemed empty.
There was no excrement in the forecourt, and far fewer flies
amongst the straw. The accumulated smell of old faecal matter
was no less acute, however, and Redman was about to turn away
when there was a noise from inside, and a great bulk righted itself.
He leaned over the padlocked wooden gate, blotting out the stench
by an act of will, and peered through the doorway of the sty.
The pig came out to look at him. It was three times the size of
its companions, a vast sow that might well have mothered the pigs
in the adjacent pen. But where her farrows were filthy-flanked, the
sow was pristine, her blushing pink frame radiant with good health.
Her sheer size impressed Redman. She must have weighed twice
what he weighed, he guessed: an altogether formidable creature.
A glamorous animal in her gross way, with her curling blonde
lashes and the delicate down on her shiny snout that coarsened to
bristles around her lolling ears, and the oily, fetching look in her
dark brown eyes.
Redman, a city boy, had seldom seen the living truth behind,
or previous to, the meat on his plate. This wonderful porker came
as a revelation. The bad press that he d always believed about
pigs, the reputation that made the very name a synonym for
foulness, all that was given the lie. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]