His parents had christened him Broderick, but for as long as he could remember, he'd always been known as "Badger." He spent his life feeling that Badger was a fatuous name, but he couldn't stand Broderick either. To him, the word "Broderick" described a thing—a gardening implement or DIY tool—rather than a human being. Becoming an animal, he decided, was better than remaining a thing.
Now, because he was getting old, it worried Badger that the hours (which must have added up to years) he'd spent worrying about these two names could have been better spent worrying about something else. The world was in a state. Everybody could see that. The north and south poles, always reliably blue in every atlas, now had flecks of yellow in them. He knew that these flecks were not printers' errors. He often found himself wishing that he had lived in the time of Scott of the Antarctic, when ice was ice. The idea of everything getting hotter and dirtier made Badger Newbold feel faint.
Newbold. That was his other name. "Equally inappropriate," he'd joked to his future wife, Verity, as he and she had sat in the crimson darkness of the 400 Club, smoking du Maurier cigarettes. "Not bold. Missed the war. Spend my days going through ledgers and adding up columns. Can't stand mess. Prefer everything to be tickety-boo."
"Badger," Verity had replied, with her dimpled smile, with her curvy lips, red as blood, "you seem bold to me. Nobody has dared to ask me to marry them before!"
She'd been so adorable then, her brown eyes so sparkly and teasing, her arms so enfolding and soft. Badger knew that he'd been lucky to get her. If that was the word. If you could "get" another person and make them yours and cement up the leaks where love could escape. If you could do that, then Badger Newbold had been a fortunate man.
He was seventy now. Verity was sixty-nine. On the question of love, they were silent. Politeness had replaced love. They lived in a lime-washed farmhouse in Suffolk on the pension Badger had saved, working as an accountant for thirty-seven years. Their two children, Susan and Martin, had gone to live their lives in far-off places on the other side of the burning globe: Australia and California. Their mongrel dog, Savage, had recently died and been buried, along with all the other mongrel dogs they'd owned, under a forgiving chestnut tree in the garden. And these days, Badger found himself very often alone.
He felt that he was waiting for something. Not just for death. In fact, he did nothing much except wait. Verity often asked him in the mornings: "What are you going to do today, Badger?" and it was difficult to answer this. Badger would have liked to be able to reply that he was going to restore the polar ice cap to its former state of atlas blue, but he knew perfectly well that his day was going to be empty of all endeavour. So he made things up. He told Verity he was designing a summer house, writing to the children, pruning the viburnum, overhauling the lawnmower or repairing the bird-table.
She barely noticed what he did or didn't do. She was seldom at home. She was tearing about the place, busy beyond all reason, trying to put things to rights. She was a volunteer carer at the local shelter for battered wives. She was a Samaritan. Her car was covered with "Boycott Burma" stickers. Her "Stop the War in Iraq" banner—which she had held aloft in London for nine hours—was taped to the wall above her desk. She sent half her state pension to Romanian orphanages, cancer research, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Amnesty International, the Sudan Crisis Fund. She was never still, always trembling with outrage, yet ready with kindness. Her thick grey hair looked perpetually wild, as though desperate hands had been tugging it. Her shoes were scuffed and worn.
Badger was proud of her. He saw how apathetic English people had become, slumped in their ugly, squashy furniture. Verity was resisting apathy. "Make every day count," was her new motto. She was getting old, but her heart was like a piston, powering her on. When a new road threatened the quiet of the village, it was Verity who had led the residents into battle against the council—and won. She was becoming a local heroine, stunningly shabby. She gave away her Barbour jacket and replaced it with an old duffel coat, bought from the Oxfam shop. Wearing it, with her unkempt hair, she looked like a vagrant, and it was difficult for Badger to become reconciled to this. He felt that her altered appearance made him seem stingy.
The other thing which upset Badger about the new Verity was that she'd gone off cooking. She said she couldn't stand to make a fuss about food when a quarter of the world was living on tree bark. So meals, in the Newbold household, now resembled postwar confections: ham and salad, shop-bought cake, rice pudding, jacket potatoes with margarine. Badger was getting constipated. He had dreams about béarnaise sauce. Sometimes, guiltily, he took himself to the Plough at lunchtime and ordered steak pie and Guinness and rhubarb crumble. Then he would go home and fall asleep. And in the terror of a twilight awakening, Badger would berate himself for being exactly the kind of person Verity despised: apathetic, self-indulgent and weak. At such times, he began to believe it was high time he went to see his maker. When he thought about heaven, it resembled the old 400 Club, with shaded pink lights and waiters with white bow ties and music, sad and sweet.
One spring morning, alarmingly warm, after Verity had driven off somewhere in her battered burgundy Nissan, Badger opened a brown envelope addressed to him—not to Verity—from a place called the Oaktree Wildlife Sanctuary. It was a home for animals who had been rescued from cruelty or annihilation. Photographs of peacefully grazing donkeys, cows, sheep, geese and deer fell out from a plastic brochure. Badger picked these up and looked at them. With his dogs, Badger felt that he had always been able to tell when the animals were happy. Their brains might be tiny, but they could register delight. Savage, the last one, had had a kind of grin, seldom seen, but suddenly there in the wake of a long walk, or lying on the hearth rug in the evenings, when the ability to work the CD player returned to Verity and she would put on a little Mozart. And, looking at these pictures, Badger felt that the animals and birds were in a state of contentment. Their field looked spacious and green.
Inside the brochure was a letter in round writing, which began:
Dear Mr Newbold,
I am a penguin and my name is Peerless.
At this point, Badger reached for his reading glasses, so that he could see the words properly. Had he read the word "Peerless" correctly? Yes, he had. He went on reading:
…I was going to be killed, along with my mates, Peter, Pavlov, Palmer and Pooter, when our Zoo was closed down by the council. Luckily for me, the Oaktree Wildlife Sanctuary stepped in and saved us. They've dug a pond and installed a plastic slide for us. We have great fun there, walking up the slide and slipping down again. We have a good diet of fish. We are very lucky penguins.
However, we do eat quite a lot and sometimes we have to be examined by the vet. All of this costs the Sanctuary a lot of money. So we're looking for Benefactors. For just £25 a year you could become my Benefactor. Take a look at my picture. I'm quite smart, aren't I? I take trouble with my personal grooming. I wasn't named "Peerless" for nothing. Please say that you will become my Benefactor. Then you will be able to come and visit me any time you like. Bring your family. With best wishes from Peerless the Penguin.
Badger unclipped the photograph attached to the letter and looked at Peerless. His bill was yellow, his coat not particularly sleek. He was standing in mud at the edge of the pond. He looked as though he had been stationary in that one place for a long time.
Peerless.
Badger lay all the Sanctuary correspondence aside and leaned back in his armchair. He closed his eyes. His hands covered his face.
Peerless had been the name of his friend at boarding school. His only real friend. Anthony Peerless. A boy of startling beauty, with a dark brow and a dimpled smile and colour always high, under the soft skin of his face.
He'd been clever and dreamy, useless at cricket, unbearably homesick for his mother. He'd spent his first year fending off the sixth formers, who passed his photograph around until it was chewed and faded. Then Badger had arrived and become his friend. And the two had clung together, Newbold and Peerless, Badger and Anthony, in that pitiless kraal of a school. Peerless the dreamer, Badger the mathematical whizz. No friendship had ever been like this one.
"Are you aware, Newbold, that your friend, Peerless, has been late for games three times in three weeks?"
"No, I wasn't aware, Sir."
"Well, now you are. And what do you propose to do about it?"
"I don't know."
"I don't know, Sir!"
"I don't know, Sir."
"Well, I think I know. You can warn Peerless that if he is ever—ever—late for cricket again, then I will give you a beating. Do you understand, Newbold? I am making you responsible. If you fail in your task, it is you who will be punished."
Peerless is in the grounds of the school, reading Keats. Badger sits down by him, among daisies, and says: "I say, old thing, the Ogre's just given me a bit of an ultimatum. He's going to beat me if you're late for cricket practice again."
Peerless looks up and smiles his girlish, beatific smile. He starts picking daisies. He's told Badger he loves the smell of them, like talcum powder, like the way his mother smells.
"The Ogre's mad, Badger. You realise that, don't you?" says Peerless.
"I know," says Badger. "I know."
"Well, then, we're not going to collude with him."
And that's all that can be said about it. Peerless returns to Keats and Badger lies down beside him and asks him to read something aloud.
Overhead—look overhead
Among the blossoms white and red…
When verity came back that evening from wherever she'd been, Badger showed her the photograph of Peerless the Penguin and said: "I'm going to become his Benefactor."
Verity laughed at the picture. "Typical you, Badger!" she snorted.
"Why typical me?"
"Save the animals. Let the people go hang."
Badger ate his ham and salad in silence for a while, then he responded:
"I don't think you've any idea what you've just said."
There wasn't a moment's pause, not a second's thought, before Verity snapped: "Yes, I do. You're completely apathetic when it comes to helping people. But where animals are concerned, you'll go to the ends of the bloody earth."
"Perhaps that's because I am one," said Badger. "An animal."
"Oh shut up, Badger," said Verity. "You really do talk such sentimental bollocks."
Badger got up and walked out of the room. He went out on to the terrace and looked at the spring moon. He felt there was a terrible hunger in him, not just for proper food, but for something else, something which the moon's light might reveal to him, if he stayed there long enough, if he got cold enough, waiting. But nothing was revealed to him. The only thing that happened was that, after ten minutes, Verity came out and said: "Sorry, Badger. I can be a pig."
Badger wrote to Peerless and sent his cheque for £25. An effusive thankyou note arrived, inviting him to visit the Sanctuary.
It wasn't very far. But Badger's driving was slow, and he frequently forgot which gear he was in. Sometimes, the engine of the car started screaming, as if in pain. Badger reflected that if, one day, he were obliged to drive to London, he would probably never get there.
He drove at last down an avenue of newly planted beeches. Grassy fields lay behind them. At the end of the drive was a sign saying Welcome to Oaktree Wildlife Sanctuary and a low redbrick building with a sundial over the door. It was an April day.
At a reception desk, staffed by a woebegone young man with thick glasses, Badger announced himself as the Benefactor of Peerless the Penguin and asked to see the penguin pool.
"Oh certainly," said the young man, whose name was Kevin. "Do you wish to avail yourself of the free wellingtons service?"
Badger saw ten or eleven pairs of green wellingtons lined up by the door. He felt that free wellingtons and new beech trees were a sign of something good. "Imagination," Anthony Peerless used to say, "is everything. Without it, the world is doomed."
Badger put on some wellingtons, too large for his feet, and followed the young man across a meadow where donkeys and sheep were grazing. These animals moved in a slow, unfrightened way.
"Very popular with children, the donkeys," said Kevin. "But they want rides, of course, and we don't allow this. The animals have been burdened enough."
"Quite right," said Badger.
And then there it was, shaded by a solitary oak, a grey pond, bordered by gunnera and stinging nettles. At one end of it was the slide, made of blue plastic, and one of the penguins was making its laborious way up some wide plastic steps to the top of it.
"So human, aren't they?" said Kevin, smiling.
Badger watched the penguin fall forwards and slither down into the muddy water of the pond. Then he asked: "Which one's Peerless?"
Kevin stared short-sightedly at the creatures. His gaze went from one to the other, and Badger could tell that this man didn't know. Someone had given the penguins names, but they resembled each other so closely that it was impossible to distinguish Pooter from Pavlov, Palmer from Peter.
Badger stood there, furious. He'd only sent the damn cheque because the penguin was called Peerless. He'd expected some recognisable identity.
Then he saw that one of the penguins was lying apart from all the others, immersed in the water, where it lapped against the nettles. He stared at this one. It lay in the pond like a human being might lie in a bed, with the water covering its chest.
"There he is," said Kevin. "That's Peerless."
Badger walked nearer. Peerless stood up and looked at him. A weak sun came out and shone on the dark head of Peerless and on the nettles.
"Alright," said Badger. "Like to stay here a while by myself, if that's okay."
"Sure," said Kevin. "Just don't give them any food, will you? It could be harmful."
Kevin walked away over the meadow where the donkeys wandered and Badger stayed very still, watching Peerless. The other penguins queued, like children, for a turn on the plastic slide, but Peerless showed no interest in it at all. He just stayed where he was, on the edge of the pond, going in and out, in and out. It was as though he constantly expected something consoling from the water and then found that it wasn't there. After a while, Badger decided that he understood exactly what was wrong: the water was too warm. This penguin longed for an icy sea.
Badger sat down on the grass. He didn't care that it was damp. He closed his eyes.
It's the beginning of the school term and Badger is unpacking his trunk. He's fourteen years old. He lays his red and brown rug on his iron bed in the cold dormitory. Other boys are making darts out of paper and chucking them from bed to bed. Peerless's name is not on the dormitory list.
The Ogre appears at the door and the dart-throwing stops. Boys stand to attention, like army cadets. The Ogre comes over to Badger and puts a hand on his shoulder, and the hand isn't heavy as it usually is, but tender, like the hand of a kind uncle.
"Newbold," he says. "Come up to my study."
He follows the Ogre up the polished main stairs, stairs upon which the boys are not normally allowed to tread. He can smell the sickly wood polish, smell the stale pipe smoke in the Ogre's tweed clothes.
He is invited to sit down in the Ogre's study, on an old red armchair. And the Ogre's eyes watch him nervously. Then the Ogre says: "It concerns Peerless. As his friend, you have the right to know. His mother died. I'm afraid that Peerless will not be returning to the school."
Badger looks away from the Ogre, out at the autumn day; at the clouds carefree and white, at the chestnut leaves flying around in the wind.
"I see," he manages to say. And he wants to get up, then get out of this horrible chair and go away from here, go to where the leaves are falling.
But something in the Ogre's face warns him not to move. The Ogre is struggling to tell him something else and is pleading for time in which to tell it. I may be "the Ogre," says the terrified look on his face, but I'm also a man.
"The thing is…" he begins. "The thing is, Newbold, Peerless was very fond of his mother. You see?"
"See what, Sir?"
"Well. He found it impossible. Her absence. As you know, he was a dreaming kind of boy. He was unable to put up any resistance to grief."
That evening, Verity made a lamb stew. It was fragrant with rosemary and served with mashed potato and fresh kale. Badger opened a bottle of red wine.
Verity was quiet, yet attentive to him, waiting for him to speak to her. But for a long time Badger didn't feel like speaking. He just felt like eating the good stew and sipping the lovely wine and listening to the birds fall silent in the garden and the ancient electric clock ticking on the kitchen wall.
Eventually, Verity said: "When I said what I said about you letting people go hang, Badger, I was being horribly thoughtless. For a moment, I'd completely forgotten about Anthony Peerless."
Badger took another full sip of the wine, then he said: "It's alright, darling. No offence. How were the battered wives?"
"Okay. Now, I want you to tell me about the penguins. Are they being properly looked after?"
He knew she was humouring him, that she didn't care one way or the other whether a bunch of penguins lived or died. But the wine was making him feel cheerful, almost optimistic, so he chose to say to her: "The place is nice. But the penguin pool's not cold enough. In the summer, they could die."
"That's a shame."
"I won't let it happen. I've got a plan."
"Tell me?" said Verity.
She poured him more wine. The stew was back in the oven, keeping warm. Mozart was softly playing next door. This was how home was meant to be.
"Ice," said Badger. "I'm going to keep them supplied with ice."
He saw Verity fight against laughter. Her mouth opened and closed—that scarlet mouth he used to adore. Then she smiled kindly. "Where will you get that amount of ice from?"
"The sea," he said. "I'll buy it from the trawlermen."
"Oh," she said. "Good idea, Badger."
"It'll be time-consuming, fetching it, lugging it over to the Sanctuary, but I don't mind. It'll give me something to do."
"Yes, it will."
"And Peerless…"
"What?"
"He seems to suffer the most with things as they are. But the ice should fix it."
"Good," said Verity. "Very good."
He lined the boot of his car with waterproof sheets. He bought a grappling hook for handling the ice blocks. He christened it "the Broderick." Despite the sheeting, Badger's car began to smell of the sea. He knew the fishermen thought he was a crazy old party.
But at the pond, now, when the penguins saw him coming, lugging the ice on an ancient luge he'd found in the garage, they came waddling to him and clustered round him as he slowly lifted the end of the luge and let the ice slide into the water. Then they dived in and climbed up on to the ice, or swam beside it, rubbing their heads against it. And he thought, as he watched them, that this was the thing he'd been waiting for, to alter the lot of someone or something. All he'd done was to change the water temperature of a pond in the middle of a Suffolk field by a few degrees. As world events went, it was a pitiful contribution, but he didn't care. Badger Newbold wasn't the kind of man who had ever been able to change the world, but at least he had changed this. Peerless the Penguin was consoled by the cool water.
And now, when Verity asked him what he was going to do on any particular morning, Badger would be able to reply that he was going to do the ice.
From this time on, in Badger's nightmares, the death of Anthony Peerless was a different one…
Peerless has come to stay with him in Suffolk. There are midnight feasts and whispered conversations in the dark.
Then one morning, Peerless goes out alone on his bicycle. He rides to the dunes and throws his bicycle down on to the soft sand. He walks through the marram grass down to the sea, wearing corduroy trousers and an old brown sweater and a familiar jacket, patched and worn. It's still almost summer, but the sea is an icy, meticulous blue. Peerless starts to swim. His face, with its high colour, begins to pale and pale until he's lost in the cold vastness.
He floats serenely down. He floats towards a vision of green grass, towards the soft smell of daisies.
Overhead—look overhead
Among the blossoms white and red…
