Hatchings

Chapter Two

10 Chapter Two Boland Lipp was celebrating his fiftieth birthday by leaving his pupils’ exercise books in the back of his 1967 VW Beetle, by unplugging the telephone and by listening to excerpts from Bach’s Matthäus Passion. He was sipping, savouring, neat scotch - Dimple Haig - from the modified skull of a large rodent: probably a porcupine. Jesus was singing: “Ihr habet allezeit Arme bei euch, mich aber habt ihr nicht allezeit” in a rich, sweet baritone that reminded Boland, somehow, of praline. He looked up the word in a dictionary - forever at his elbow - and was amused to find that it came from a French soldier called Marshall de Plessis-Preslin whose cook invented the sweet by browning nuts in boiling sugar. I’ll try that if I can get hold of some decent nuts, thought Boland as he put down the dictionary and picked up his drinking vessel. He took a small sip of the excellent liquor and rolled it on his tongue. With a sigh he settled back on the old divan which took up most of his living room and which smelt faintly of urine. It was upholstered in a coarse cabbage-green material, and it was stuffed with kapok and slightly demented springs. Green was Boland Lipp’s favourite colour. His eyes were green. The glass in the French doors, which screened the living room from the rest of the apartment, was stained green; the walls were a pastel green; the predominantly green scatter-cushions, which were literally scattered all over the floor, the pot plants, the serpentine fireplace - Boland had collected the stones himself - the rising damp in one corner, the malachite ornaments... all combined to create the effect, in the living room of this unmarried, middle-aged English teacher, of a monstrous green salad. More like apples - Granny Smiths - still on the tree. Yes, a northern fruit, cold and tangy, covered in dew. Nothing sugary about Bach. “Was wollt ihr mir geben? Ich will ihn euch verraten.” That’s Judas, the bugger.… Three loud knocks on the floor of the apartment above him, probably with a sherry bottle (the time before he’d heard one smash on the third impact) warned Boland to reduce the volume of his music or, in the words of Mrs Afrodite (her parents had been poor spellers) Fawkes, to “Stop thet blerry recket, men”. Boland leaned over to his record player and turned the volume down. He didn’t want to have a fight, on his birthday, with the likes of Mrs Fawkes: terror of Cornwall Crescent. There were six one-bedroom apartments in Cornwall Crescent, which was owned by an anonymous businessman of Asian descent. Boland Lipp occupied Number One, Mrs Fawkes occupied Number Six. As it was a 11 double-storey construction, Number Six squatted on top of Number One, Number Five squatted on top of Number Two, and Number Four squatted on top of Number Three. Number Two, next door to Boland’s, was owned by a Gwanda farmer called Craig Wick who used it for the occasional weekend when he came in to watch his son, Doberman, playing rugby for Black Rhino High (the school where Boland taught English). Sometimes his wife, Beryl, accompanied him, sometimes she didn’t. They had a daughter, Candle, who had a key to the apartment where she frequently put into practice the relevant ministry’s call for Education with Production. She accomplished this with the assistance of several of her friends in Form Three C at Black Rhino High and a most fortunate apprentice Fitter and Turner from the Technical Training College called Hoagy Van Worsmasjien. These sessions, which generally took place during the week - God knows how the boarders got away with it - were awaited with, as Wordsworth might have put it, a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, in the green-eyed fiftyyear old. A thin brick wall separated Number One’s living room from Number Two’s bedroom. They shared a common wall-socket. If Boland Lipp unplugged his socket, and put his sound left ear against the three little holes, he could hear quite clearly the stimulating sounds of Education with Production going on in the Wick’s apartment. Boland’s good angel told him that he ought to report these girls to Mr McMackmack, the headmaster of Black Rhino High, but his bad angel wouldn’t hear of it, and his bad angel nearly always prevailed. Apartment Number Three was illegally occupied by...