Dryden Heppac seat. The afternoon sun saturated the terrace. Above, below and beside him other families were taking their leisure on their own terraces; including, had he known it, the controversial new arrivals the Tansons. Behind him his wife Morran and his three children were commencing the uproar which generally followed their communal Sunday lunches. Dryden ignored all peripheral details, however. He had closed the curtains to the terrace and locked the doors. Every week he was alone to remain undisturbed for this hour. And he had been transported off the terrace. Away from Jakks Way, across Jalkin to a site separated by both a few streets and an unimaginable gulf. Huwdone House, the home of the Christotan federal government.
The magic which had teleported him there was actually fairly mundane. The great presses of the Ocheverry Printing Works in Forgar. A lot of under-employed writers with university degrees but poor connections, who had therefore developed grudges either specific or general. And a population like that of the Triple Cities, with basic literary skills, a few spare coppers each week and a desire to see politics reduced to a pantomime. The result was the newsheets. A perennial and distinctive feature of the Cities, forever corralled with the words 'irreverent', 'satirical' and sometimes 'grotesque.'
There were a great many different newsheets, fresh titles appearing each week and others vaporising just as regularly. And a wide range of styles were bundled into that single lazy category. Some did in fact give weighty, intelligent analysis of current affairs. Some were earnest calls for revolution; some preferred to ignore what the ruling classes did in assembly chambers and focus on what they – allegedly – did in their beds. Others were devoted to religions, sports or the arts. Dryden's choice of reading each week was The Messenger. A long-established title, it was a standard example of a classic newsheet. And that suited Dryden because he considered himself to be a standard example of a classic Cities resident. The Messenger gave a mixture of serious news and unfounded gossip. The tone throughout could best be described as snide. It considered Christoté's leaders to be greedy, bigoted and incompetent and rarely made exceptions. Yet it did not really question the structures which they stood upon, nor the assumption that Christoté was still the greatest nation on earth. A man like Dryden could emerge from The Messenger with his sense of superiority renewed, towards both the men who ruled him and the world which his country ruled.
It was also the right length for his weekly period of solitude. Eight pages and large print – that filled an hour nicely. But as he read now, tracing the words with a finger as he did, one phrase continued to trouble him. Not because it contained a difficult words. The Messenger knew its readers and did not use difficult words. Perhaps its writers, sometimes appearing only semi-literate themselves, did not know any.
Nor was he puzzled by the nicknames which dominated some of the stories. Many newsheets used them for news which wasn't exactly based on empirical facts; which were therefore not precisely news. The accounts of whose wife who was sleeping with, or which poverty relief fund had just been plundered by whom. Nicknames were very useful in these cases. While censorship barely existed in the Cities, libel laws certainly did. A great many newsheets had been obliterated by damages awarded after incautious accusations. But if a story said Jack-In-The-Box was copulating with Hangdog's mistress, the editor could claim with a straight face that he was talking about somebody entirely different to the man accusing him in the courtroom. The Messenger knew this because it had used the defence successfully more than once in the past. It employed its aliases consistently, however, and with clues as to their real identity. So their established readers could know precisely whom was being accused of what.
Dryden knew most of their lurid cast of characters. Some were easy to decipher and featured regularly. The Spider, for example, was patently Holan Brightson, Principal Secretary of Huwdone House and the éminence grise's éminence grise. Fat-arse would be Holstace Fortraine, Baron of the Province of Dorlaf; again, not hard to guess as Fortraine couldn't make a public appearance without somebody commenting on the size of his posterior. Not all were understood by Dryden. He was a little puzzled about the identity of Knock-Knees, a new arrival to the low farce which was Christotan public life. But the cast of characters was so great that it was hard to keep up. The Messenger gossiped about almost everyone. From the meanest Guards sergeant or magistrate right up to the Chancellor herself…
Yes. That was the phrase which was making Dryden frown. The Chancellor her self. Four years after the election of Chela Tatel as Chancellor, the leader of the federal government and effectively the most powerful person alive, it still didn't seem right. It was like a comforting old cliché which had a strange new word inserted in the middle. Only monarchies were supposed to end up with female rulers, sometimes acquiring them by default. The countries which chose their rulers almost always selected men. Even Christoté, for all its boasts to be embracing gender equality. Dryden knew why Chela Tatel had been elected. The Spider – though we may as well use his real name, for this account cannot really be contested. Holan Brightson wanted to continue running the country behind a curtain. He had accrued immense power under the previous Chancellor ('The Walking Corpse') and wished for a new mannequin. So he selected Tatel, a protégé of his with very little personal influence, and systematically destroyed all other candidates. That was understandable to Dryden. Shocking, of course, but at the same time not remotely surprising. And it wasn't that Dryden disapproved of a female Chancellor. He was a just man. He tried hard to support equality and quite often succeeded. But still, the Chancellor her self…. The notion was somehow puzzling, somehow not right. Dryden also realised he had entered an age when all new developments belonged to this category.
Chela Tatel's nickname was The Office Girl. She justified it, however, and rarely featured in The Messenger's racier stories. As far as anyone had discovered, she worked every hour she was awake and usually stayed awake until she was almost fainting from exhaustion. And when she featured in The Messenger's political polemics, she was almost always treated with approval. Tatel hadn't become just another victim trapped in The Spider's web. At first, perhaps, but she was becoming increasingly independent, decisive and sensible. Under her, a government sunk deep in corruption and malaise was being hauled to firm ground. There were signs that Tatel would not just be the best Chancellor for fifty years – after all, the competition was scarcely strong – but actually a good ruler.
This notion troubled Dryden far less. Women being granted the trappings of power was something alien. Strong female governance in practice, though, was ingrained in his life. When he was growing up his mother was the dictatorial governor of a chaotic kingdom. His dim memories of his grandparents featured an obese old woman ruthlessly bullying a timid old man. His family now… Well, he liked to say that he and Morran were basically equal though his word ultimately settled all disputes. He suspected the truth was different, however. Especially since his back collapsed and his wages toppled with it while her own earnings grew. In those last few years he had never dared test who was truly the master of the household. This was his only authoritarian command left. That he could have one undisturbed hour a week to read. Even then he had to flee the apartment to get his peace and rely on Morran guarding the door.
And where did the power reside in his other relationship? The one he plunged into six months ago when rebelling against being sucked into the role of solid citizen, dependable father, obedient husband? That question barely needed asking. She had total command, of course. She controlled him utterly. When they fought it was only so he could emerge from their liaisons with the smallest fleck of dignity left.
What else could he do though? What could he create which allowed him any real freedom or power? Dryden sat back and stared into the blue sky, the comforting sarcasm of the newsheet forgotten for the moment. He wondered how many thousands of identical men in the Cities were doing exactly the same as he was that second. Fleeing their families for an afternoon, gulping down sunshine in their mean little terraces or putrid little back yards. Many no doubt also shifting position on their seats, trying to ease the aches from their damaged bodies. Looking forward to a future in which absolutely nothing would improve.
Dryden tried remembering the moment when he realised: this is it. This is the best I can get. He used to have the usual childhood dreams. To grow up into a great warrior, a great ruler, a great writer; anything, really, to set him above everyone else. And at some point the ambitions shrivelled and he knew greatness would always elude him. And he accepted this. The epiphany should have come when his parents took him out of school at thirteen, unable to educate him past the minimum legal age. That should have been the moment because it was when his future was effectively denied. When his development ended with him still partially literate, partially numerate, partially complete. It meant he would never find work which carried a proper salary or any sight of a ladder heading further upwards. Which was a career rather than just a means of survival. So he would never leave Jakks Way except to go somewhere just like it, or ever find a wife other than someone just like Morran. But he didn't think he truly realised this at the time. He vaguely recalled some sort of hope surviving for a while. Even a tremor of excitement, just for a short time, at becoming an adult. It happened gradually, he supposed. Awareness rising while determination was pressed down, until they met to form a perfectly flat horizon.
Besides, his future was being shaped even before he was thrown out of school with half an education. He might have inherited his father's business or learnt an uncle's trade. None of his family, though, owned even the humblest enterprise. They were employed by the Forgar workshops. That was the single gift they could give Dryden: an opening at the workshops. And that was all he could pass down to his own children. They still saw their futures as infinite and glowing. Even Stonnie, the eldest, who was starting to learn a few truths about the world and was almost permanently angry as a result. All three still had the vivaciousness which accompanied hope. When each one turned thirteen, Dryden knew he would have to cripple their lives and offer the same measly little gift as compensation. Together with the excuse his father had given him, doubtless learnt from his own father. I had it no better.
Dryden could, however, remember the exact moment when his dismal replica of a career had been capped permanently. Five years ago he was working at the Zierlona carpentry workshop. He was still only a tooth on a cogwheel, one small part of a long assembly line. But he had been at the Zierlona for nearly two decades and had progressed from entirely unskilled tasks to ones requiring a reasonable amount of concentration. Promotion to foreman, the standard reward for capable and loyal workers, was a reasonable aspiration. If granted another year or two, he might have achieved that. One morning, however, he bent down to pick up a chisel. A torrent of agony suddenly flowed down his back. He couldn't straighten up. He was imprisoned in his bed for weeks, unable to walk or stand properly. Even after a partial recovery he was unable to stand bending over all day – the precise position he needed to work on the assembly line.
Zierlona treated him remarkably well, he was told. Most workshops would have fired him immediately. Instead Dryden was allowed to work half-shifts, finding that he could manage about four hours at a time before the pain grew unmanageable. His wages were slashed in twain, of course, and his more routine duties taken over by an apprentice who was paid half that amount. And that was indeed extremely generous by the standards of the Forgar workshops. His bosses could have given him a foreman's job anyway, or any other post which didn't require him to be stood stooping all day. However, that was a little too subtle for men who really were unable to distinguish their workers from saws or hammers. Nor would they ever promote Dryden now. He was still loyal and capable. But he had given them a small problem, a tiny amount of extra work, and they would always resent him for that. Dryden's herbalist told him that two of his vertebrae had somehow fused together. Dryden didn't understand that but it sounded right, for his career had been fixed just as permanently.
He was, of course, unable to stop himself reliving the fateful morning over and over. What if he had never dropped that chisel, he kept wondering. What if he had bent down more carefully to retrieve it. What if… His priestess finally managed to end these hypotheses. The Goddess Ella, she told him, places everyone in their positions. She had meant him to be half-crippled as well as half-educated. What matters is not what one's role is but how one plays it. This also seemed logical to Dryden. He wondered, though, if the priestess thought the theory was any sort of a comfort. Because if true, it meant that absolutely every hope he had ever had was an illusion. The Goddess had marked him out at birth for mediocrity.
The voices in the apartment were growing louder. As often happened nowadays, what had begun as a good natured free-for-all was focussing into a real contest between Morran and Stonnie. He was starting to realise. Stonnie, twelve years old now, was becoming increasingly aware that his parents were not unique and not special. The usual categories could be applied to them, and the usual insults. And Stonnie was sensing that the only ways in which his father differed were failings. Some days Dryden did not leave for work until noon, others he came home for the afternoon. He could not work like other boy's fathers. Because he was weaker than other boy's fathers. He was barely a man and what work he did was really only for pin money. It was Morran who kept the family fed and clothed, Morran with her endless rolls of lace and cloth and her perpetually dancing needle. She was the strong one. Stonnie seemed to appreciate this more with each passing week and his respect for his father shrunk in proportion.
The two voices, one a mannish female one, the other still slightly uneasy with its newly gained masculinity, grew even louder. Dryden detected swear words coming from each. He tensed in irritation. Morran ran the household quite blatantly. She did whatsoever she pleased whereas his own actions – the ones she knew about at least – were expected to be presented for her approval. Yet she still didn't try to control their children properly. She was forever criticising Stonnie, castigating his poor school grades, his eating habits, his foul language and, most especially, his friends. There were no real commands handed out, however. She always let her son answer her back. And when he tested her discipline, as he was doing more and more, she just let it crumble away and finally there always came the shrill cry of:
"Dryden!"
He hauled himself to his feet, grumbling under his breath. Always that cry for the stern father. The appeal to a higher authority which didn't even exist anymore. Perhaps it was her way of indulging him, assuring him that he still had a morsel of power. But he thought it was just the familiar woman's trick to retain her children's love. Father would discipline them; then mother moves in afterwards to dry their tears.
Their two daughters had vanished, doubtless fleeing to their bedroom as usual. Morran and Stonnie were on the other side of the room, their postures betraying the cause of the argument. Morran was barring the doorway, all but clinging to the frame for support. Her son was trying to get past. He looked close to pushing her aside, even striking her down. Dryden thought that one day soon he would. Morran was furious rather than frightened, however, and turned her outraged face to Dryden.
"Did you hear what he just said to me? Did you hear what the little get called me?"
Dryden walked across the room, feeling the peace of the terrace drain away. "What did you call your mum?" he demanded, as sternly as he could.
Stonnie stepped away from the door. Perhaps unconsciously, he kept retreating until his back was against a wall. "Nowt," he mumbled, his head down.
"Don't bloody deny it now," Morran said triumphantly. "You try an' have the guts to admit it."
"I just wanted to go out," Stonnie said, his voice defeated.
"Aye, an' I said you couldn't. Not while you're hanging round that little Marksen thug. An' not till you do your homework for once."
"Don't see what's wrong with Marksen."
"You bloody well know what's wrong with him. Whole neighbourhood does."
"You don't even know him-"
"What did you call your mum?" Dryden repeated.
Stonnie looked up suddenly. His eyes were on a level with his father's, partly because Dryden now had a permanent stoop. He was still thin but muscles were building on his forearms and shoulders. He worked part time stacking crates at a warehouse; and quite a lot of his school hours were spent fighting. And he was still growing. "I called her a fucking bitch!" he shouted. "An' she fucking is for-"
Dryden's arm sprang out. Sometimes he struck his daughters too. Only on the back of their legs, though, only with an open hand. And he held back so much that he was sure they barely felt a thing and only cried because it was expected.
He used to punish Stonnie that way too. Now he balled his fist. Now he struck the boy on the jaw or, in this case, the cheekbone. And he let all his frustration, all his outrage at the injustices, explode through him and power his arm forward.Stonnie's head snapped back. His whole body shuddered back. His shoulders hit the wall and he slid down it to land in an untidy, beaten lump. His eyes were glazed for a moment. Tears then filled them as he gazed up at his father. Dryden looked down at him dispassionately for a second. Then, before the boy could get up or Morran could remonstrate with him, he turned. Before any consequences could reach him, he fled back to the haven of the terrace.
The magic which had teleported him there was actually fairly mundane. The great presses of the Ocheverry Printing Works in Forgar. A lot of under-employed writers with university degrees but poor connections, who had therefore developed grudges either specific or general. And a population like that of the Triple Cities, with basic literary skills, a few spare coppers each week and a desire to see politics reduced to a pantomime. The result was the newsheets. A perennial and distinctive feature of the Cities, forever corralled with the words 'irreverent', 'satirical' and sometimes 'grotesque.'
There were a great many different newsheets, fresh titles appearing each week and others vaporising just as regularly. And a wide range of styles were bundled into that single lazy category. Some did in fact give weighty, intelligent analysis of current affairs. Some were earnest calls for revolution; some preferred to ignore what the ruling classes did in assembly chambers and focus on what they – allegedly – did in their beds. Others were devoted to religions, sports or the arts. Dryden's choice of reading each week was The Messenger. A long-established title, it was a standard example of a classic newsheet. And that suited Dryden because he considered himself to be a standard example of a classic Cities resident. The Messenger gave a mixture of serious news and unfounded gossip. The tone throughout could best be described as snide. It considered Christoté's leaders to be greedy, bigoted and incompetent and rarely made exceptions. Yet it did not really question the structures which they stood upon, nor the assumption that Christoté was still the greatest nation on earth. A man like Dryden could emerge from The Messenger with his sense of superiority renewed, towards both the men who ruled him and the world which his country ruled.
It was also the right length for his weekly period of solitude. Eight pages and large print – that filled an hour nicely. But as he read now, tracing the words with a finger as he did, one phrase continued to trouble him. Not because it contained a difficult words. The Messenger knew its readers and did not use difficult words. Perhaps its writers, sometimes appearing only semi-literate themselves, did not know any.
Nor was he puzzled by the nicknames which dominated some of the stories. Many newsheets used them for news which wasn't exactly based on empirical facts; which were therefore not precisely news. The accounts of whose wife who was sleeping with, or which poverty relief fund had just been plundered by whom. Nicknames were very useful in these cases. While censorship barely existed in the Cities, libel laws certainly did. A great many newsheets had been obliterated by damages awarded after incautious accusations. But if a story said Jack-In-The-Box was copulating with Hangdog's mistress, the editor could claim with a straight face that he was talking about somebody entirely different to the man accusing him in the courtroom. The Messenger knew this because it had used the defence successfully more than once in the past. It employed its aliases consistently, however, and with clues as to their real identity. So their established readers could know precisely whom was being accused of what.
Dryden knew most of their lurid cast of characters. Some were easy to decipher and featured regularly. The Spider, for example, was patently Holan Brightson, Principal Secretary of Huwdone House and the éminence grise's éminence grise. Fat-arse would be Holstace Fortraine, Baron of the Province of Dorlaf; again, not hard to guess as Fortraine couldn't make a public appearance without somebody commenting on the size of his posterior. Not all were understood by Dryden. He was a little puzzled about the identity of Knock-Knees, a new arrival to the low farce which was Christotan public life. But the cast of characters was so great that it was hard to keep up. The Messenger gossiped about almost everyone. From the meanest Guards sergeant or magistrate right up to the Chancellor herself…
Yes. That was the phrase which was making Dryden frown. The Chancellor her self. Four years after the election of Chela Tatel as Chancellor, the leader of the federal government and effectively the most powerful person alive, it still didn't seem right. It was like a comforting old cliché which had a strange new word inserted in the middle. Only monarchies were supposed to end up with female rulers, sometimes acquiring them by default. The countries which chose their rulers almost always selected men. Even Christoté, for all its boasts to be embracing gender equality. Dryden knew why Chela Tatel had been elected. The Spider – though we may as well use his real name, for this account cannot really be contested. Holan Brightson wanted to continue running the country behind a curtain. He had accrued immense power under the previous Chancellor ('The Walking Corpse') and wished for a new mannequin. So he selected Tatel, a protégé of his with very little personal influence, and systematically destroyed all other candidates. That was understandable to Dryden. Shocking, of course, but at the same time not remotely surprising. And it wasn't that Dryden disapproved of a female Chancellor. He was a just man. He tried hard to support equality and quite often succeeded. But still, the Chancellor her self…. The notion was somehow puzzling, somehow not right. Dryden also realised he had entered an age when all new developments belonged to this category.
Chela Tatel's nickname was The Office Girl. She justified it, however, and rarely featured in The Messenger's racier stories. As far as anyone had discovered, she worked every hour she was awake and usually stayed awake until she was almost fainting from exhaustion. And when she featured in The Messenger's political polemics, she was almost always treated with approval. Tatel hadn't become just another victim trapped in The Spider's web. At first, perhaps, but she was becoming increasingly independent, decisive and sensible. Under her, a government sunk deep in corruption and malaise was being hauled to firm ground. There were signs that Tatel would not just be the best Chancellor for fifty years – after all, the competition was scarcely strong – but actually a good ruler.
This notion troubled Dryden far less. Women being granted the trappings of power was something alien. Strong female governance in practice, though, was ingrained in his life. When he was growing up his mother was the dictatorial governor of a chaotic kingdom. His dim memories of his grandparents featured an obese old woman ruthlessly bullying a timid old man. His family now… Well, he liked to say that he and Morran were basically equal though his word ultimately settled all disputes. He suspected the truth was different, however. Especially since his back collapsed and his wages toppled with it while her own earnings grew. In those last few years he had never dared test who was truly the master of the household. This was his only authoritarian command left. That he could have one undisturbed hour a week to read. Even then he had to flee the apartment to get his peace and rely on Morran guarding the door.
And where did the power reside in his other relationship? The one he plunged into six months ago when rebelling against being sucked into the role of solid citizen, dependable father, obedient husband? That question barely needed asking. She had total command, of course. She controlled him utterly. When they fought it was only so he could emerge from their liaisons with the smallest fleck of dignity left.
What else could he do though? What could he create which allowed him any real freedom or power? Dryden sat back and stared into the blue sky, the comforting sarcasm of the newsheet forgotten for the moment. He wondered how many thousands of identical men in the Cities were doing exactly the same as he was that second. Fleeing their families for an afternoon, gulping down sunshine in their mean little terraces or putrid little back yards. Many no doubt also shifting position on their seats, trying to ease the aches from their damaged bodies. Looking forward to a future in which absolutely nothing would improve.
Dryden tried remembering the moment when he realised: this is it. This is the best I can get. He used to have the usual childhood dreams. To grow up into a great warrior, a great ruler, a great writer; anything, really, to set him above everyone else. And at some point the ambitions shrivelled and he knew greatness would always elude him. And he accepted this. The epiphany should have come when his parents took him out of school at thirteen, unable to educate him past the minimum legal age. That should have been the moment because it was when his future was effectively denied. When his development ended with him still partially literate, partially numerate, partially complete. It meant he would never find work which carried a proper salary or any sight of a ladder heading further upwards. Which was a career rather than just a means of survival. So he would never leave Jakks Way except to go somewhere just like it, or ever find a wife other than someone just like Morran. But he didn't think he truly realised this at the time. He vaguely recalled some sort of hope surviving for a while. Even a tremor of excitement, just for a short time, at becoming an adult. It happened gradually, he supposed. Awareness rising while determination was pressed down, until they met to form a perfectly flat horizon.
Besides, his future was being shaped even before he was thrown out of school with half an education. He might have inherited his father's business or learnt an uncle's trade. None of his family, though, owned even the humblest enterprise. They were employed by the Forgar workshops. That was the single gift they could give Dryden: an opening at the workshops. And that was all he could pass down to his own children. They still saw their futures as infinite and glowing. Even Stonnie, the eldest, who was starting to learn a few truths about the world and was almost permanently angry as a result. All three still had the vivaciousness which accompanied hope. When each one turned thirteen, Dryden knew he would have to cripple their lives and offer the same measly little gift as compensation. Together with the excuse his father had given him, doubtless learnt from his own father. I had it no better.
Dryden could, however, remember the exact moment when his dismal replica of a career had been capped permanently. Five years ago he was working at the Zierlona carpentry workshop. He was still only a tooth on a cogwheel, one small part of a long assembly line. But he had been at the Zierlona for nearly two decades and had progressed from entirely unskilled tasks to ones requiring a reasonable amount of concentration. Promotion to foreman, the standard reward for capable and loyal workers, was a reasonable aspiration. If granted another year or two, he might have achieved that. One morning, however, he bent down to pick up a chisel. A torrent of agony suddenly flowed down his back. He couldn't straighten up. He was imprisoned in his bed for weeks, unable to walk or stand properly. Even after a partial recovery he was unable to stand bending over all day – the precise position he needed to work on the assembly line.
Zierlona treated him remarkably well, he was told. Most workshops would have fired him immediately. Instead Dryden was allowed to work half-shifts, finding that he could manage about four hours at a time before the pain grew unmanageable. His wages were slashed in twain, of course, and his more routine duties taken over by an apprentice who was paid half that amount. And that was indeed extremely generous by the standards of the Forgar workshops. His bosses could have given him a foreman's job anyway, or any other post which didn't require him to be stood stooping all day. However, that was a little too subtle for men who really were unable to distinguish their workers from saws or hammers. Nor would they ever promote Dryden now. He was still loyal and capable. But he had given them a small problem, a tiny amount of extra work, and they would always resent him for that. Dryden's herbalist told him that two of his vertebrae had somehow fused together. Dryden didn't understand that but it sounded right, for his career had been fixed just as permanently.
He was, of course, unable to stop himself reliving the fateful morning over and over. What if he had never dropped that chisel, he kept wondering. What if he had bent down more carefully to retrieve it. What if… His priestess finally managed to end these hypotheses. The Goddess Ella, she told him, places everyone in their positions. She had meant him to be half-crippled as well as half-educated. What matters is not what one's role is but how one plays it. This also seemed logical to Dryden. He wondered, though, if the priestess thought the theory was any sort of a comfort. Because if true, it meant that absolutely every hope he had ever had was an illusion. The Goddess had marked him out at birth for mediocrity.
The voices in the apartment were growing louder. As often happened nowadays, what had begun as a good natured free-for-all was focussing into a real contest between Morran and Stonnie. He was starting to realise. Stonnie, twelve years old now, was becoming increasingly aware that his parents were not unique and not special. The usual categories could be applied to them, and the usual insults. And Stonnie was sensing that the only ways in which his father differed were failings. Some days Dryden did not leave for work until noon, others he came home for the afternoon. He could not work like other boy's fathers. Because he was weaker than other boy's fathers. He was barely a man and what work he did was really only for pin money. It was Morran who kept the family fed and clothed, Morran with her endless rolls of lace and cloth and her perpetually dancing needle. She was the strong one. Stonnie seemed to appreciate this more with each passing week and his respect for his father shrunk in proportion.
The two voices, one a mannish female one, the other still slightly uneasy with its newly gained masculinity, grew even louder. Dryden detected swear words coming from each. He tensed in irritation. Morran ran the household quite blatantly. She did whatsoever she pleased whereas his own actions – the ones she knew about at least – were expected to be presented for her approval. Yet she still didn't try to control their children properly. She was forever criticising Stonnie, castigating his poor school grades, his eating habits, his foul language and, most especially, his friends. There were no real commands handed out, however. She always let her son answer her back. And when he tested her discipline, as he was doing more and more, she just let it crumble away and finally there always came the shrill cry of:
"Dryden!"
He hauled himself to his feet, grumbling under his breath. Always that cry for the stern father. The appeal to a higher authority which didn't even exist anymore. Perhaps it was her way of indulging him, assuring him that he still had a morsel of power. But he thought it was just the familiar woman's trick to retain her children's love. Father would discipline them; then mother moves in afterwards to dry their tears.
Their two daughters had vanished, doubtless fleeing to their bedroom as usual. Morran and Stonnie were on the other side of the room, their postures betraying the cause of the argument. Morran was barring the doorway, all but clinging to the frame for support. Her son was trying to get past. He looked close to pushing her aside, even striking her down. Dryden thought that one day soon he would. Morran was furious rather than frightened, however, and turned her outraged face to Dryden.
"Did you hear what he just said to me? Did you hear what the little get called me?"
Dryden walked across the room, feeling the peace of the terrace drain away. "What did you call your mum?" he demanded, as sternly as he could.
Stonnie stepped away from the door. Perhaps unconsciously, he kept retreating until his back was against a wall. "Nowt," he mumbled, his head down.
"Don't bloody deny it now," Morran said triumphantly. "You try an' have the guts to admit it."
"I just wanted to go out," Stonnie said, his voice defeated.
"Aye, an' I said you couldn't. Not while you're hanging round that little Marksen thug. An' not till you do your homework for once."
"Don't see what's wrong with Marksen."
"You bloody well know what's wrong with him. Whole neighbourhood does."
"You don't even know him-"
"What did you call your mum?" Dryden repeated.
Stonnie looked up suddenly. His eyes were on a level with his father's, partly because Dryden now had a permanent stoop. He was still thin but muscles were building on his forearms and shoulders. He worked part time stacking crates at a warehouse; and quite a lot of his school hours were spent fighting. And he was still growing. "I called her a fucking bitch!" he shouted. "An' she fucking is for-"
Dryden's arm sprang out. Sometimes he struck his daughters too. Only on the back of their legs, though, only with an open hand. And he held back so much that he was sure they barely felt a thing and only cried because it was expected.
He used to punish Stonnie that way too. Now he balled his fist. Now he struck the boy on the jaw or, in this case, the cheekbone. And he let all his frustration, all his outrage at the injustices, explode through him and power his arm forward.Stonnie's head snapped back. His whole body shuddered back. His shoulders hit the wall and he slid down it to land in an untidy, beaten lump. His eyes were glazed for a moment. Tears then filled them as he gazed up at his father. Dryden looked down at him dispassionately for a second. Then, before the boy could get up or Morran could remonstrate with him, he turned. Before any consequences could reach him, he fled back to the haven of the terrace.
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