#35-37

“Ulysses! Ulysses Earnest!”

I was six years old. My mother's burr woke the dust in every corner of the art museum. I could feel my father's footsteps vibrate up through the gilded arches.

“I know where he is, Madge, he's checking out the old Greek nudies again; you saw how thrilled with them he was the first time we went through...”

“Mummy,” I called from the sculpture room. The steps quickened. I heard my father's chuckle, full of pipe smoke.

“Ulysses,” she cried, her knees buckling in front of me as she took up my hands. “Don't wander off, if I've told you once I've told you a thousand times...”

“I'm sorry,” I sighed. “I just really like the statues.”

“What a little rascal,” my father said, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Found the naughtiest room in the museum, did you?”

I was stunned. How offensive. “W- No sir, I-”

“Nothing to be shamed of, boy; curiosity is only natural.”

“It's time to go, Sweets,” said my mum, cutting off my protestations. My father had already strode off towards the front door, and her heels clicked off in his direction.

I reached for her hand and clasped her wrist. “Mum,” I huffed, exasperated.

She heard me and stopped hard, hearing brevity in my little voice that drew her eyes up wide. “Lyss.”

“It's- it's not the bodies,” I breathed. “It's their faces. I love their faces.”

Margaret Exeter examined me through the eyes she gave me. Her black curls bobbed about her round face as she nodded, buying time. Her thin, soft lips pursed and opened.

“Madge! Taxi's waiting!”

She lingered on me another second or two, then slipped her wrist through to my hand and held it tight. “Alright Warwick, give us a moment; it's not our fault you walk so quickly!”

We rode to the station in a black cab. I leaned my face into the window and thought of cheekbones and chins, and of absolute languor and delicious thoughtlessness and imminent greatness and optimism to be seen in the pupilless eyes of the Hellenic statue boys, before words like 'languor' and 'Hellenic' were the first to come to mind. They were beautiful things. I smiled to myself.

“It's a relief, isn't it,” my father said lowly, in Mum's ear. “To see him doing... normal boy things. I was worried about the little chap for awhile.”

She took a deep breath. I felt her eyes on my back for the briefest second. “Yes,” she replied. Her resolve was mere plastic. “It is.”