Another part of the wood by Beryl Bainbridge

went into the barn. There
was a lot of shouting, and after a while a boy came out into the sunshine with a mop of hair and a face pretty as a girl,
prettier than most. Mr Joseph said it was too late for breakfast now, nearly lunchtime in fact. He told the lad he was too
fat anyway, which was about the size of it – a big soft lump of a lad, just standing there shuffling his feet and blushing
and saying he was sorry. After a bit more talk, too low-pitched for Willie to catch, the lad began taking off his shirt and
his vest and there was a pair of breasts good enough for a woman, if you didn’t like them too big. White little swellings
turning pinkish, for all the world like the buds on the Norway maple down
in the Glen, and not a sign of hair on the padded chest nor beneath the armpits. This last fact Willie established when Joseph
had hoisted the youth on to the branch of the tree, letting him dangle by his arms above the slope. He was supposed to raise
his legs, but he just hung there with his face filling with blood.

4
    At mid-day when Joseph was checking the food stores he was depressed to realize that the supply he had brought to last three
or four days was barely going to feed them for today. It was Dotty eating half the bacon at one go. Where had the grapefruit
juice gone and the three boxes of cheese segments? Righteously indignant, he thundered her name from the doorway, agitating
Willie who was taking his ease at the back of the barn, sitting in the long grass with his cigarette alight and his cap over
his eyes.
    ‘What’s up now?’ Willie asked himself out loud.
    Again the girl’s name was called, louder this time.
    Grinning because it wasn’t he Mr Joseph was after, Willie relaxed and drew on his Woodbine.
    After a while, for she had been down at the stream with Roland when the summons came, Dotty appeared at the door of the hut,
a little out of breath from her climb up the slope. She had been dreaming all the time she ran up the path that above in the
holiday hut love waited. Love had suddenly seized Joseph by the throat and dragged him to the edge of the forest to call her
name. Either that or he had found her lost comb which she hadn’t washed for weeks or the soiled underwear she had stuffed
into the wicker basket under the settee.
    She said ‘Yes?’ looking at his humourless face as he put down knives and forks on the dinner table.
    ‘Where’s the cheese and where’s the grapefruit juice?’
    ‘The grapefruit juice?’
    ‘The grapefruit juice.’
    He was emptying salt from a packet into an egg cup. All the work there would be when they left, she thought – putting butter
in glass bowls and Roland’s tomato sauce into a gravy jug. Such a
fuss. Relieved that it wasn’t her comb or the state of her bra, she said, ‘If you mean the grapefruit juice we got on the
Finchley Road, it’s in the fridge at the flat.’
    ‘At the flat?’
    ‘You said it was too big to go in the grocery box, so we didn’t bring it. And the cheese is in the tin on the shelf.’
    ‘Do you realize we have only enough food for today?’
    It didn’t surprise her at all. He’d brought rice and raisins but no potatoes or tins of Heinz beans or anything they could
live on.
    ‘It means,’ said Joseph, bitterly, ‘that I’ll have to shop again tomorrow. I’ve already spent a bomb.’
    Dotty sat down at the table.
    ‘You’re slouching,’ he said. ‘Here, cut up some onions. I’m making a rice thing for lunch.’
    ‘Roland won’t eat it,’ she said.
    Joseph didn’t reply. She chopped gamely at the onions he placed in front of her.
    ‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘that I ought to say something to Kidney? About his being in Roland’s bed?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Dotty. ‘What
could
you say?’
    ‘I could mention the bed’s not big enough for two. He might say something – give some explanation.’
    ‘I doubt it,’ Dotty said. ‘Are you worried about sex or something?’
    ‘Don’t be