352
PARTISAN REVIEW
She thought that he was like an intelligent dog, always trying to
anticipate wants and commands. Not like a cat at all: that was a dif–
ferent kind of sensitivity. And he was not like a monkey, for he was
slow and heavy. Not like anything she had known. He was Ben, he
was himself-whatever that was. She was pleased he was going to find
his family. He was hardly communicative, but she had gathered it was
a well-off family. And there was his accent which was not what you'd
expect, from how he looked. He seemed to like his mother.
If
she her–
self could be good to Ben-so Ellen Biggs saw it-then his family could
too. But if it didn't work, and he turned up here again, then she would
go with him to the Public Records Office and find out about his age.
She was so confused about this she had given up trying to puzzle it out.
He repeated that he was eighteen, and she had to believe him. In many
ways he was childish, and yet when she took a good look at that face
she could even think him middle-aged, with those lines around his eyes.
Little ones, but still: no eighteen-year-old could have them. She had
actually gone so far in her thoughts to wonder if the people he
belonged to, whoever they were, matured early, in which case they
would die young, according to our ideas. Middle-aged at twenty, and
old at forty, whereas she, Ellen Biggs, was eighty and only just begin–
ning to feel her age to the point that she hoped she would not have to
make that annoying journey to the Records Office, and then stand in a
line: the thought made her tired and cross. She fell asleep, listening to
Ben dream, and woke to find him gone. The paper with her address
had gone, and the ten pound note she had left for him. Although she
had expected it, now she had to sit down, her hand pressing on a trou–
bled heart. Since he had come into her life, weeks ago, foreboding had
come too. Sitting alone when he had gone off somewhere she was
thinking, "Where's Ben? What is he doing? Was he being cheated
again?" Far too often had she heard from him, "They took my
money,"-"They stole everything." The trouble was, information came
out of him in a jumble.
"When was that, Ben?"
"It
was summer."
"No, I mean, what year?"
"I don't know.
It
was after the farm."
"And when was that?"
"I was there two winters."
She knew he was about fourteen when he left his family. So what had
he been doing for four years?
