the Uncle of the day laying a hand on him. "You leave our Micky alone," she'd say.
And then there had come the excitement of the war. Expecting Hitler's bombers - abortive sirens. Moaning Minnies. Going down into the Tubes and spending the nights there. The fun of it! The whole street was there with their sandwiches and their bottles of pop. And trains rushing through practically all night. That had been life, that had! In the thick of things!
And then he'd come down here - to the country. A dead and alive place where nothing ever happened!
"You'll come back, love, when it's all over," his mother had said, but lightly as though it wasn't really true. She hadn't seemed to care about his going. And why didn't she come too? Lots of the kids in the street had been evacuated with their Mums. But his mother hadn't wanted to
go. She was going to the North (with the current Uncle, Uncle Harry!) to work in munitions.
He must have known then, in spite of her affectionate farewell. She didn't really care... Gin, he thought, that was all she cared for, gin and the Uncles...
And he'd been here, captured, a prisoner, eating tasteless, unfamiliar meals; going to bed, incredibly, at six o'clock, after a silly supper of milk and biscuits (milk and biscuits!), lying awake, crying, his head pushed down under the blankets, crying for Mom and home.
It was that woman! She'd got him and she wouldn't let him go. A lot of sloppy talk. Always making him play silly games. Wanting something from him. Something that he was determined not to give. Never mind. He'd wait. He'd be patient! And one day - one glorious day, he'd go home. Home to the streets, and the boys, and the glorious red buses and the tube, and fish and chips, and the traffic and the area cats - his mind went longingly over the catalogue of delights. He must wait. The war couldn't go on forever. Here he was stuck in this silly place with bombs falling all over London and half London on fire - coo! What a blaze it must make, and people being killed and houses crashing down.
He saw it in his mind all in glorious Technicolor.
Never mind. When the war was over he'd go back to Mom. She'd be surprised to see how he'd grown.
In the darkness Micky Argyle expelled his breath in a long hiss.
The war was over. They'd licked Hitler and Mussolini. Some of the children were going back. Soon, now...
And then she had come back from London and had said that he was going to stay at Sunny Point and be her own little boy...
He had said: "Where's my Mom? Did a bomb get her?"
If she had been killed by a bomb - well, that would be not too bad. It happened to boys' mothers.
But Mrs. Argyle said "No," she hadn't been killed. But she had some rather difficult work to do and couldn't look after a child very well - that sort of thing, anyway; soft soap, meaning nothing... His Mom didn't love him, didn't want him back - he'd got to stay here, for ever...
He'd sneaked round after that, trying to overhear conversations, and at last he did hear something, just a fragment between Mrs. Argyle and her husband. "Only too pleased to get rid of him - absolutely indifferent and something about a hundred pounds. So then he knew - his mother
had sold him for a hundred pounds..."
The humiliation - the pain - he'd never got over it... And she had bought him! He saw her, vaguely, as embodied power, someone against whom
he, in his puny strength, was helpless. But he'd grow up, he'd be strong one day, a man. And then he'd kill her...
He felt better once he'd made that resolution.
Later, when he went away to school, things were not so bad. But he hated the holidays - because of her. Arranging everything, planning, giving him all sorts of presents. Looking puzzled, because he was so undemonstrative. He hated being kissed by her... And later still, he'd taken a pleasure in thwarting her silly plans for him. Going into a bank!
An oil company. Not he. He'd go and find work for himself.
It was when he was at the university that he'd tried to trace his mother. She'd been dead for some years, he discovered - in a car crash with a man who'd been driving roaring drunk...
So why not forget it all? Why