on was dirty, and torn, too.
He took it off. The jacket she had found fitted his big shoulders and chest but was loose around the waist. ‘Look, you can pull it in.’ There was a belt, which she adjusted. And there were trousers, too. ‘And now I want you to have a bath, Ben.’
He took off the new jacket and his trousers, obedient, watching her all the time.
‘I’m going to put away these trousers, Ben.’ She did so. ‘And I have got new underpants, and vests.’
He was standing naked there, watching, while she went next door to a little bathroom. His nostrils flared, taking in the smell of water. Waiting, he checked all the smells in the room, the fading aromas of the good stew, a warm friendly smell; the bread, which smelled like a person; then a rank wild smell – the cat, still watching him; the smell of a slept-in bed, where the covers had been pulled up covering the pillows, which had a different smell. And he listened, too. The lift was silent, behind two walls. There was a rumbling in the sky, but he knew aeroplanes, was not afraid of them. The traffic down there he did not hear at all – he had shut it out of his awareness.
The old woman came back, and said, ‘Now, Ben.’ He followed her, clambered into the water, and crouched in it. ‘Do sit down,’ she said. He hated the submission to the dangerous slipperiness, but now he was sitting in hot water to his waist. He shut his eyes, and with his teeth bared, this time in a grin of resignation, he let her wash him. He knew this washing was something he had to do, from time to time. It was expected of him. In fact he was beginning to enjoy water.
Now the old woman, Ben’s eyes no longer fastened on her face, allowed herself to show the curiosity she felt, which could never be assuaged – or indulged in.
Under her hands was a strong broad back, with fringes of brown hair on either side of the backbone, and on the shoulders a mat of wet fur: it felt like that, as if she were washing a dog. On the upper arms there was hair, but not so much, not more than could be on an ordinary man. His chest was hairy, but it wasn’t like fur, it was a man’s chest. She handed him the soap but he let it slide into the water, and dug around furiously for it. She found it, and lathered him vigorously, and then used a little hand-shower to get it all off. He bounded out of the bath, and she made him go back, and she washed his thighs, his backside, and then, his genitals. He had no self-consciousness about these, and so she didn’t either. And then, he could get out, which he did laughing, and shaking himself into the towel she held. She enjoyed hearing him laugh: it was like a bark. Long ago she had a dog who barked like that.
She dried him, all over, and then led him back to the other room, naked, and made him put on his new underpants, his new vest, a charity shop shirt, his trousers. Then she put a towel around his shoulders and as he began to jerk about in protest, she said, ‘Yes, Ben, you have to.’
She trimmed his beard first. It was stiff and bristly, but she was able to make a good job of it. And now his hair, and that was a different matter, for it was coarse and thick. The trouble was his double crown which, if cut short, showed like stubbly whorls on the scalp. It was necessity that had left the hair on the top of his head long, and at the sides. She told him that one of these new clever hairdressers would make him look like a film star, but since he did not take this in, she amended it to, ‘They could make you look so smart, Ben, you’d not know yourself.’
But he didn’t look too bad now, and he smelled clean.
It was early evening and she did what she would have done alone: she brought out cans of beer from her fridge, filled her glass, and then she filled one for him. They were going to spend the evening doing what he liked best, watching television.
First she found a piece of paper and wrote on it:
Mrs Ellen Biggs
11 Mimosa House
Halley Street, London SE6.
She said, ‘Ask your mother for your birth certificate. If she has to send for it, then tell her she can always write to you care of me – and here is the address.’
He did not answer: he was frowning.
‘Do you understand, Ben?’
‘Yes.’
She did not know whether he did or not, but thought so.
He was looking at the television. She got up, switched it on, and came back by way of the cat. ‘There, there puss, it’s all right.’ But the cat never for one moment took its eyes off Ben.
And now it was an easy pleasant evening. He did not seem to mind what he saw. Sometimes she switched to another channel, thinking he was bored. He did like wildlife programmes, but there wasn’t one tonight. This was a good thing, really, because he sometimes got too excited: she knew wild instincts had been aroused. She had understood from the start that he was controlling instincts she could only guess at. Poor Ben – she knew he was that, but not how, or why.
At bedtime she unrolled on to the floor the futon he slept on, and put blankets beside it in case: he usually did not use coverings. The cat, seeing that this enemy was on the floor, leaped up on to the bed and lay close against the old woman’s side. From there she could not watch Ben, but it was all right, she felt safe. When the lights were off the room was not really dark, because there was a moon that night.
The old woman listened for Ben’s breathing to change into what she called his night breathing. It was, she thought, like listening to a story, events or adventures that possibly the cat would understand. In his sleep Ben ran from enemies, hunted, fought. She knew he was not human: ‘not one of us’ as she put it. Perhaps he was a kind of yeti. When she had seen him first, in a supermarket, he was prowling – there was only that word for it – as he reached out to grab up loaves of bread. She had had a glimpse of him then, the wild man, and she had never forgotten it. He was a controlled explosion of furious needs, hungers and frustrations, and she knew that even as she said to the attendant, ‘It’s all right, he is with me.’ She handed him a pie she had just bought for her lunch, and he was eating it as she led him out of the place. She took him home, and fed him. She washed him, though he had protested that first time. She saw how he reacted to some cold meat – quite alarming it was; but she bought extra meat for him. It was just here where he was most different; meat, he could not get enough. And she was an old woman, eating a little bit of this here, a snack there – an apple, cheese, cake, a sandwich. The stew that day had been just luck: she ate that kind of meal so seldom.
One night, when the three of them had gone to bed, and to sleep, she had woken because of a pressure along her legs. Ben had crept up and laid himself down, his head near her feet, his legs bent. It was the cat’s distress that had woken her. But Ben was asleep. It was how a dog lays itself down, close, for company, and her heart ached, knowing his loneliness. In the morning he woke embarrassed. He seemed to think he had done wrong, but she said, ‘It’s all right, Ben. There’s plenty of room.’ It was a big bed, the one she had had when she was married.
She thought that he was like an intelligent dog, always trying to anticipate wants and commands. Not like a cat at all: that was a different kind of sensitivity. And he was not like a monkey, for he was slow and heavy. Not like anything she had known. He was Ben, he was himself – whatever that was. She was pleased he was going to find his family. He was hardly communicative, but she had gathered it was a well-off family. And there was his accent which was not what you’d expect, from how he looked. He seemed to like his mother. If she herself could be good to Ben – so Ellen Biggs saw it – then his family could too. But if it didn’t work, and he turned up here again, then she would go with him to the Public Records Office and find out about his age.
