simply to ensure that the interior light went out.
These were some of the fun times we all had with Roger, and was part of what marked him out as the unique individual that he was. They were the best of times for him. The idea that he was now becoming so immersed in one subject, albeit something as apparently harmless as his insect farm, felt wrong.
“Have you tried restricting the times he can be down there?”
My father said that they had, and at first had prevented him from going down there for more than an hour in the early mornings and half an hour in the evenings.
“Well, what happened?” I asked.
“What happened was that he would do as he was told, of course, but he would just spend the rest of the time sitting next to the kitchen window and staring down the garden at the outside of the shed. It didn’t matter what we did, all hewas doing was passing the time until he was allowed back there. In the end it just seemed cruel to keep him away from it, and so we let him go back. At least he was doing something, rather than just staring out of the window.”
“But what does he do down there for such a long time?” I asked. “There must be a limit to what you can do? It’s only a heap of soil and some bugs, for Christ’s sake.”
“That’s what you think.”
Dad opened the door from the kitchen leading to the back garden and headed off down the path. I stepped out into the sunshine and fell in behind him, noticing for the first time that my father had begun to adopt a trace of the shuffling gait of an older man. I watched as his bumpy fingers fumbled with the keys in the padlock. He was only in his mid-fifties at that time, but I knew that he had been suffering from progressive arthritis for some years. Only now did I notice that his knuckles were swollen and his fingers were distorted out of shape, and as I watched him it seemed to me that his hand was shaking.
“Are you OK, Dad?”
“Yes,” he said, turning to face me. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason. I thought that maybe your hand was shaking a bit.”
My dad laughed, apparently carelessly, and turned back to the task. “Too much coffee I expect. Since your mother got that new percolator I think I must be suffering from a caffeine addiction.” I looked at his profile as his frustrationmounted, and once again he seemed to be a much older man than the one I thought of as my father. “Bloody thing,” he said, “it gets stiff after the rain.” I was on the brink of offering to help when the lock snapped open, and I realized that it would have been an error to have intervened.
He pulled open the door and his hand fumbled against the inside wall as he sought the switch. A series of strip lights had been mounted on the walls and on the ceiling, and for a few seconds it seemed like the first flickering hint of an electrical storm. Moments later the blackness inside was illuminated by a strange blue half-light, more in keeping with the interior of a spacecraft than a garden shed.
“Bloody hell, Dad. What on earth has been going on here?”
You know what it’s like when your mind thinks it knows what it expects to see, but then what happens next is completely different? It takes a while to become reorientated. That’s what happened here. I had a mental image from the last time I had been in there with Harriet, when the contents of the shed had been a series of glass-fronted display-cases, stacked up against the wall one on top of another. What I now saw looked more like the inside of one of those animal-experimentation laboratories you read about in the Sunday supplements.
Not that there was anything recognizable as an animal. No ugly experiments going on involving chemicals or electrodes, but all of the walls were now obscured by glass-fronted cases of various shapes and sizes, and all of the containers helddifferent materials of every texture and colour. Some seemed to be nothing more than deep-brown soil or mud, while others consisted of
These were some of the fun times we all had with Roger, and was part of what marked him out as the unique individual that he was. They were the best of times for him. The idea that he was now becoming so immersed in one subject, albeit something as apparently harmless as his insect farm, felt wrong.
“Have you tried restricting the times he can be down there?”
My father said that they had, and at first had prevented him from going down there for more than an hour in the early mornings and half an hour in the evenings.
“Well, what happened?” I asked.
“What happened was that he would do as he was told, of course, but he would just spend the rest of the time sitting next to the kitchen window and staring down the garden at the outside of the shed. It didn’t matter what we did, all hewas doing was passing the time until he was allowed back there. In the end it just seemed cruel to keep him away from it, and so we let him go back. At least he was doing something, rather than just staring out of the window.”
“But what does he do down there for such a long time?” I asked. “There must be a limit to what you can do? It’s only a heap of soil and some bugs, for Christ’s sake.”
“That’s what you think.”
Dad opened the door from the kitchen leading to the back garden and headed off down the path. I stepped out into the sunshine and fell in behind him, noticing for the first time that my father had begun to adopt a trace of the shuffling gait of an older man. I watched as his bumpy fingers fumbled with the keys in the padlock. He was only in his mid-fifties at that time, but I knew that he had been suffering from progressive arthritis for some years. Only now did I notice that his knuckles were swollen and his fingers were distorted out of shape, and as I watched him it seemed to me that his hand was shaking.
“Are you OK, Dad?”
“Yes,” he said, turning to face me. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason. I thought that maybe your hand was shaking a bit.”
My dad laughed, apparently carelessly, and turned back to the task. “Too much coffee I expect. Since your mother got that new percolator I think I must be suffering from a caffeine addiction.” I looked at his profile as his frustrationmounted, and once again he seemed to be a much older man than the one I thought of as my father. “Bloody thing,” he said, “it gets stiff after the rain.” I was on the brink of offering to help when the lock snapped open, and I realized that it would have been an error to have intervened.
He pulled open the door and his hand fumbled against the inside wall as he sought the switch. A series of strip lights had been mounted on the walls and on the ceiling, and for a few seconds it seemed like the first flickering hint of an electrical storm. Moments later the blackness inside was illuminated by a strange blue half-light, more in keeping with the interior of a spacecraft than a garden shed.
“Bloody hell, Dad. What on earth has been going on here?”
You know what it’s like when your mind thinks it knows what it expects to see, but then what happens next is completely different? It takes a while to become reorientated. That’s what happened here. I had a mental image from the last time I had been in there with Harriet, when the contents of the shed had been a series of glass-fronted display-cases, stacked up against the wall one on top of another. What I now saw looked more like the inside of one of those animal-experimentation laboratories you read about in the Sunday supplements.
Not that there was anything recognizable as an animal. No ugly experiments going on involving chemicals or electrodes, but all of the walls were now obscured by glass-fronted cases of various shapes and sizes, and all of the containers helddifferent materials of every texture and colour. Some seemed to be nothing more than deep-brown soil or mud, while others consisted of
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