Ben, in the World. Doris Lessing

at night, and at weekends went to nearby towns to hang about the streets with the local youths, hoping for a fight and some fun. Ben was their leader because he was so strong, and stood up for them. So they thought, but really the reason was that inwardly he was mature, he was a grown man, more of a parent, whereas they were still children. One by one they were caught, sent to borstal, or returned to parents and school. One evening he was standing on the edge of a crowd of fighting youngsters – he did not fight, he was afraid of his strength, his rage – and he realised he was alone, without companions. For a while he was one of a gang of much older youths, but he did not dominate them as he had the young ones. They forced him to steal for them, made fun of him, jeered at his posh accent. He left them and drifted down to the West Country where he fell in with a motorbike gang, which was engaged in warfare with a rival gang. He longed to drive a motorcycle, but could not get the hang of it. But it was enough to be near them, these machines, he loved them so. The gang used him to guard their bikes when they went into a caff, or a pub. They gave him food, and even a little money sometimes. One night the rival gang found him standing over half a dozen machines, beat him up, twelve to one, and left him bleeding. His own gang returned to find a couple of their machines gone, and were ready to beat him up again but found this apparently slow stupid oaf transformed into a whirling screaming fighting madman. He nearly killed one of them. Setting on him all together they subdued him, no bones broken, but again, he was bleeding and sick. He was taken into a pub by a girl who worked there. She washed him down, sat him in a corner, gave him something to eat, talked him into sense again. He was quiet at last, dazed perhaps.

      A man came to him, sat down, and asked if he was looking for work. This was how Ben found himself on the farm. He went with Matthew Grindly because he knew that from now on any member of the two gangs seeing him would summon his mates, and he would be beaten up again.

      The farm was well away from any main road, down an overgrown and muddy lane. It was neglected, and so was the house, which was large, and bits of it were shut off where the roof leaked too badly. This farm had been left twenty years before by their father to Mary Grindly, Matthew Grindly, and Ted Grindly. A farm, but no money. They were pretty well self-sufficient, living off their animals, fruit trees, the vegetable garden. What fields there were – one after another they had been sold off to neighbouring farmers – grew fodder. Once a month, Mary and Matthew – now Mary and Ben – walked into the village three miles off to buy groceries, and liquor for Ted. They walked because their car was rusting in a yard.

      When money was needed for food, electricity, rates, Mary said to Matthew, ‘Take that beast to market and get what you can for it.’ But bills were ignored for months at a time, and often not paid at all.

      This disgraceful place tended to be forgotten by everyone: the locals were part ashamed because of it, and part sorry for the Grindlys. It was known that ‘the boys’ – but they were getting old now – were not far off feeble-minded. They were illiterate, too. Mary had expected to marry, but it had come to nothing. It was she who ran the farm. She told her brothers what to do: mend that fence… clean out that byre… take the sheep for shearing… plant the vegetables. She was at them all day and bitter because she had to be. Then it was Matthew who was doing all the work: Ted was drinking himself to death quietly in his room. He was no trouble, but he couldn’t work. Matthew was getting arthritic, and he had chest problems, and soon the hard work was beyond him too. He fed the chickens and looked after the vegetables, but that was about it.

      Ben was given a room, with poor furniture in it – very different from the pleasant rooms he had been brought up in. He could eat as much as he wanted. He worked from daylight to dark, every day. He did know that he did most of the work, but not that without him the farm would collapse. This farm, or anything like it, would soon become impossible, when the European Commission issued its diktats, and its spy-eyes circled for ever overhead. The place was a scandal, and a waste of good land. People came tramping along the lane and through the farmyard, hoping to buy it – the telephone had been cut off, for non-payment – and they would be met by Mary, an angry old woman, who told them to go away, and slammed the door in their face.

      When on the neighbouring farms they were asked about the Grindlys, people tended to equivocate, siding with them against officialdom and the curious. If they lost the farm, what would happen to those poor derelicts, Ted and Matthew? They would find themselves in a Home, that’s what. And Mary? No, let the poor things live out their time. And they had that chap there who’d come from somewhere, no one knew where, a kind of yeti he looked like, but he did the work well enough.

      Once, when Ben had gone with Mary to the village to carry groceries back, he was stopped by a man who said to him, ‘You’re with the Grindlys, they say. Are they doing right by you?’

      ‘What do you want?’ asked Ben.

      ‘What are they paying you? Not much if I know the Grindlys. I’ll make it worth your while to come to me. I’m Tom Wandsworth… ’ – he repeated the name, and then again, ‘… and anyone around here will tell you how to get to my farm. Think about it.’

      ‘What did he say?’ Mary asked, and Ben told her.

      Ben had never been given a pay-book, and terms and conditions of work had not been mentioned. Mary had given him a couple of quid when they went to the village so he could buy toothpaste, that kind of thing. She was impressed that he cared about his personal cleanliness, and liked his clothes neat.

      Now she said, ‘I’m keeping your wages for you, Ben. You know that.’

      How could he know? This was the first time he had heard about it. Mary believed that he was stupid, like her brothers, but now saw trouble loom.

      ‘You don’t want to leave us, Ben,’ she said. ‘You’d not do better with anyone else. I’ve got a good little bit of money put aside for you. You can have it any time.’

      She pointed to a high-up drawer in her room. Then she fetched a chair, made him stand on it, and held the back steady. There were rolls of notes in the drawer. To Ben it seemed more money than he had imagined possible.

      ‘Is that mine?’ he asked.

      ‘Half of it is yours,’ said Mary.

      And when he had gone out of the room, she hid it somewhere else.

      It was Mary he did not want to leave, though he was fond of the cow and enjoyed the antics of the pigs. He thought Mary was good to him. She mended his clothes, bought him a new thick jersey for the winter, and gave him plenty of meat to eat. She was never cross with him, as she was with her brothers.

      He had a life the others did not guess at. They all went to bed early, with nothing to occupy their minds, and no television: Ted was usually drunk and snoring by nine or ten, and Mary listened to the news on the radio, and went to her room afterwards. Ben slid out over the sill of his window when the house was quiet, and went about the fields and woods, alone and free – himself. He would catch and eat little animals, or a bird. He crouched behind a bush for hours to watch fox cubs playing. He sat with his back against a tree trunk and listened to the owls. Or he stood by the cow with his arm around her neck, nuzzling his face into her; and the warmth that came into him from her, and the hot sweet blasts of her breath on his arms and legs when she turned her head to sniff at him meant the safety of kindness. Or he stood leaning on a fence post staring up at the night sky, and on clear nights he sang a little grunting song to the stars, or he danced around, lifting his feet and stamping. Once old Mary thought she heard a noise that needed investigation, went to a window, and caught a glimpse of Ben, and crept down in the dark to watch and listen. It really did make her scalp prickle and her flesh go cold. But why should she care what he did for fun? Without him the animals would be unfed, the cows would stay unmilked, the pigs would have to live in their dirt. Mary Grindly was curious about Ben, but not much. She had had too much trouble in her life to care about other people. Ben’s coming to the farm she saw as God’s kindness to her.

      Then Ted fell down some steps when drunk, and died. Surely Matthew should have been next, the half-crippled coughing man, but it was Mary who had a heart attack. Officials of all kinds suddenly became curious, and one of them, demanding to see accounts, asked Ben questions about himself. Ben was going to say