The Book of Evidence by John Banville

and Germans, it seemed — They're taking over the bloody country, Freddie, I'm telling you. They bought the ponies as pets for their spoilt offspring, at what she happily admitted were outrageous prices. Cracked, the lot of them, she said. We laughed, and then fell vacantly silent again.
    The sun was on the lawn, and a vast white cloud was slowly unfurling above the sweltering beeches. I was thinking h o w strange it was to stand here glooming out at 44

    the day like this, bored and irritable, my hands in my pockets, while all the time, deep inside me somewhere, hardly acknowledged, grief dripped and dripped, a kind of silvery ichor, pore, and strangely precious. H o m e , yes, h o m e t IS always a surprise.
    She insisted that I c o m e and look the place over, as she put it. After all, my boy, she said, someday all this will be yours. A n d she did her throaty cackle. 1 did not remember her being so easily amused in the past. There was something almost unruly in her laughter, a sort of abandon. I was a little put out by it, I thought it was not seemly. She lit up a cigarette and set o f f around the house, with the cigarette b o x and matches clutched in her left claw5 and me trailing grimly in her smoking wake. T h e house was rotting„ in places so badly, and so rapidly, that even she was startled. She talked and talked. I nodded dully, gazing at d a m p walls and sagging floors and mouldering window-frames. In my old r o o m the bed was broken, and there was something g r o w i n g in the middle of the mattress. T h e view from the w i n d o w — trees, a bit of sloping fields the red r o o f of a barn — was exact and familiar as an hallucination. Here was the cupboard I had built, and at once I had a vision of myself, ^ small b o y with a fierce frown, blunt saw in hand*
    hacking at a sheet of p l y w o o d , and my grieving heart wobbled, as if it were not myself 1 was remembering* but something like a son, dear and vulnerable, lost to nne forever in the depths of my o w n past. When I turned around my mother was not there. I found her on the stairs, looking a little odd around the eyes. She set o f f again. I must see the grounds, she cried^ the stables, the oak w o o d .
    She was determined I w o u l d see everything, everything.
    O u t of doors my spirits rose somewhat. H o w soft the air of s u m m e r here. I had been too long under harsh southern skies. A n d the trees, the great trees! those patient* quietly 45

    suffering crcaturcs, standing stock-still as if in e m b a r -
    rassment, their tragic gazes s o m e h o w turned a w a y f r o m us.
    Patch the d o g — I can see I am g o i n g to be stuck with this brute — Patch the d o g appeared, rolling its m a d eyes and s q u i r m i n g . It f o l l o w e d silently behind us across the lawn.
    T h e stable-girl, w a t c h i n g sidelong as we approached, seemed on the point of taking to her heels in fright. H e r n a m e w a s J o a n , o r J e a n , s o m e t h i n g like that. B i g b u m , big chest — o b v i o u s l y m o t h e r had felt an affinity. W h e n I s p o k e to her the p o o r girl turned crimson, and wincingly extended a calloused little p a w as if she w e r e afraid I m i g h t be g o i n g to keep it. I g a v e her one of my special, s l o w smiles, and saw m y s e l f t h r o u g h her eyes, a tall, tanned hunk in a linen suit, leaning over her on a s u m m e r l a w n and m u r m u r i n g dark w o r d s . Tinker! she yelped, get o f f !
    T h e lead p o n y , a stunted beast with a truculent eye, was e d g i n g sideways in that dully determined w a y that they have, n u d g i n g heavily against m e . I put my hand on its flank to push it a w a y , and w a s startled by the solidity, the actuality of the animal, the coarse d r y coat, the dense unyielding flesh beneath, the b l o o d w a r m t h . S h o c k e d , I t o o k my hand a w a y quickly and stepped back. S u d d e n l y I had a vivid, queasy sense of myself, not the