Seymour went back down the hall and out into the garden. His shirt clung damply to his armpits and his clay-coloured hair lay in plastered wisps across his forehead. He almost wished himself back in the caravan park, but that had been just as oppressive. His father, caught in a cycle of occasionally finding work, then being sacked for inefficiency, was not cheerful company. No place Seymour had ever lived in had been particularly pleasant as far as he could remember. He inspected the garden, hoping to relieve the tedium with some job that needed doing, but nothing was out of place, no hose to be coiled, not one weed growing amongst the sad hydrangeas.

He examined the gate, through which no one could possibly pass. It was as though Thelma believed that burglars prowled continually along the alleyway, just waiting for the chance to creep in and steal her tacky old TV set. The stiff, unused bolts couldn’t even be moved in their brackets. He put his eye to the gap above the padlock, but could see only a stretch of bluestone flags with a central guttering, and the shabby corrugated iron fences of the back yards opposite. He placed one foot on the crossbar and scrambled up—a small, skinny, uncoordinated boy made timid by a lifetime of constant nagging. Eleven years of lectures clattered away in his mind now, as though someone had pressed a control button: ‘Don’t climb on things, Seymour, you’ll rip your good shirt. Be careful, don’t go near strange dogs, you never know if they’ll bite. Did you remember to take your anti-histamine tablets? Don’t do this, don’t do that…’

The times in between, of staying with his dad, were in their own way just as restrictive. Uncertain, fluctuating moods had to be gauged and conversation trimmed accordingly, or you were likely to end up getting yelled at or sometimes hit. The blows, he knew, were never intended, but just rose from his father’s chaotic despair. It wasn’t just the job situation, either, Seymour reflected. Underneath all the blustering, his dad was scared stiff. He’d been labelled a no-hoper for so long, and that was his mother’s doing, with her sharp accusing tongue. You didn’t want someone bearing constant witness to your failure. Seymour could understand why a person would choose to drift and live apart. He could also understand why his dad so perversely clung to some remnant of family life—he was scared stiff of the uncertain future and loneliness. And that remnant happened to be Seymour himself. It was sad and depressing and he didn’t know how he could handle things. Living with either of them, it was best to keep very quiet and not obtrude at all and, under the circumstances, he hadn’t developed much expertise in climbing barriers or scaling any heights.