The Insect Farm Read Online Free PDF Page A

or the flute itself, but from the walls and the furniture in the room – anywhere but from this small being and this thin metallic tube.
    I could not wait for her to finish the closing bars of the piece, but leaned towards her and took the flute. For a second she resisted, but I felt the warmth of the instrument in my hands and suddenly it made me more insistent. Her slight wrist was in my grasp and, without speaking, I led her down the corridor. The bed was covered with a blanket that her uncle had brought back from a trip to India, and the thick lace curtains filtered the sunshine which threw patterns of light across the floor. Harriet wore a white shirt made of fine cotton, with a multicoloured design crocheted into a one-inch-wide stripe on either side of the buttons at the front, allowing tiny glimpses of her flesh beneath. She looked at me steadily, never taking her eyes from mine, and I unfastened the tiny white pearl buttons, one at a time. At one moment she covered my hands with hers, as though unsure of whether to allow me to proceed, but I shook her away. I did not feel able to stop and was glad when she acquiesced. Now her shirt lay open to her waist.
    I have the clearest memory of her softness, of smooth and perfect skin, and I placed the palms of my hands on her hips, level with the top of her jeans, and pulledher towards me. Her face was just a breath away from mine, but now, once again, she pulled back, but was no longer resisting, rather seeming to prolong the moment. I could not, and I pulled her harder towards me and we kissed a kiss which threw me down the well into Wonderland, falling headlong and not ever wanting to reach firm ground.

Chapter Four
    “Tell me again about Roger.”
    It was a Sunday afternoon and my parents had gone for a drive in the country and were not due back for several hours. Since I was constantly preoccupied by the question of how and where to have sex with Harriet, I imagine the thought must have been somewhere in my mind, and I’d probably used the idea of getting Harriet to meet Roger as an excuse to bring her to the house.
    In some ways, the fact that Roger looked perfectly normal was a disadvantage. It meant that people made no allowances for him. Had he had the familiar look of Down syndrome, then probably no one would have jostled or cursed at him when he was unable to make up his mind, at the last minute, whether or not to board the bus he had been queuing for. Had he walked with the awkward and staccato gait of the cerebral-palsy sufferer, it is unlikely that people would have become irritated as he fumbled at the supermarket checkout. But Roger had none of those characteristics. He had retained the good looks he had as a boy and, dressed as he was by my parents and therefore in their taste in clothes, he came across as a very straightforward and normal bloke in a world where the generality of youth had apparently gone crazy.
    Over the years of living alongside Roger, I think I must have seen every variation of reaction to him, from confusion and awkwardness at one end, to pity and patronizing at the other. I’d seen it all. In a cafeteria where the too loud voice of the six-year-old would ring out, “What’s the matter with that man, Mummy?” only for the child to be shushed and dragged away to another table. In the supermarket, where the vacant or benign expression on the face of the checkout girl would scroll within about five seconds through curiosity to concern to pity. The “I’ve seen it every day” routine of the professionals who talked about the need to behave normally, but then gave their advice at a speed just a little faster than dictation to an arthritic short-hand typist.
    What I had never seen, even from my own parents, was anyone who treated Roger just exactly the same as they treated everyone else. No better, no worse, with no apparent consideration for any perceived limitations on his side, and all without any evident effort to do so. That was