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The stairs groaned in unified outrage as Lamb climbed through the decrepit layers of his dominion. Giving fair warning for a change to all the Horses in their stables. All except Ho who wouldn’t hear a fucking bomb drop with his rubbish music blasting in his ears. Not that he bothered with any of them. He had his lunch and that was all that mattered. Though when he reached the very top of the building he paused at the open door.
Standish sat - exactly where she should be - at her desk. She looked up as he filled her doorway.
“Where did you disappear to?”
“I had something I needed to fetch,” she said, motioning to the space behind her door.
He frowned and pushed into the room, moving the door to have a look.
Olivia looked up at him with big sad eyes, one hand on her colouring book while the other paused reaching for a new crayon. “Hi, Grandad,” she said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at your school?”
Her eyes darted to her Grandmother and then back to him. “I’m in trouble.”
Lamb turned to look at Standish, who nodded. “Right,” he sniffed. “Standish Senior, my office.” He could practically feel her irritation following behind him as he crossed the landing. He set himself down on the lounge, his takeaway bag on the coffee table ready to be pulled apart. He didn’t bother opening it.
Standish stood on the other side of the coffee table. Her hands were squeezed together, as if she was the one to be reprimanded. “The school called and asked if I would pick Livy up. I just needed to finish the task I was working on and then I’m taking her home,” she said. Not bothering to ask if she could leave, he hadn’t stopped her before.
He raised his eyebrows.
She sighed. “There was an incident on the playground where a child got hit with a swing - which I believe was, genuinely, an accident - but Olivia, it seemed, thought it was funny and encouraged a number of the other children to laugh at the child’s injury. The school thought it would be best for her to be removed from the premises for the rest of the day.”
“Seems a bit rough, she’s a kid. So a brat got smacked with a swing, I imagine anyone would have had a laugh-”
“It’s less that she laughed at an inappropriate moment, more that she encouraged it in others. She made it worse for the injured child.”
“You know what strikes me,” he said, leaning heavily on his knees. “You’re very clearly not defining this so called injured child in any way. Normally you’d be referring to them as a poor boy or girl. Not to cast dispersions on your dedication to being politically correct, Standish, but tell me, do you know who the injured party was?”
Standish pressed her lips together, looking to the ceiling briefly, and the back at him. “Bernard,” she admitted.
“The infamous fucking Bernard,” he scoffed. “Kid had it coming.”
“Jackson-”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he waved her off. “Send her to me.”
“What are you going to say?”
“Never you mind. Sitting her in a bloody corner letting her colour isn’t exactly changing her ways, is it?”
“I was going to talk to her properly when we got home-”
“You just go on back to your work, let me worry about the kid,” Lamb said. When she didn’t move he waved his hand at her, encouraging her to shove off. He smirked to himself as she let out a heavy sigh and walked out of his office. He opened the takeaway bag and pulled out two containers. As he drew out his chopsticks and picked up his box of noodles he noticed his granddaughter standing in the doorway.
She stood just outside the office, her hands buried in the small pockets of her tunic. Her brow pinched, but her eyebrows were arched - distressed at the prospect of what was to come.
He nodded to the space beside him. “Sit,” he said.
Olivia ran forward and climbed onto the lounge beside him. Despite normally liking to touch whoever she was with, she left a reasonable gap between them. Her hands gripped the edge of the lounge as she watched him open his lunch.
“You’re causing trouble,” he said.
“I’m your trouble,” she said, looking up at him.
“There’s a difference there,” he said. “When I call you trouble, you’re trouble to me, and I like trouble. Causing trouble though-” he sniffed. “-there’s a time and a place for it. Sounds to me like you were being a bully.”
Olivia gasped. “I’m not, Grandad,” she cried out. “Bernard is a bully-”
“Oi-” he snapped his chopsticks sharply at her and she drew back with wide eyes. “Here’s how it’s gonna go-” he drew a mess of noodles out of the box and shoved them in his mouth, the rest was said around a mouthful of food. “-I’m gonna do the talking, you’re gonna shut up and listen. Because you and me, we’re gonna set some things straight. Then you’re gonna go home with Standish and you’re gonna be on your best fucking behaviour, yeah?”
She nodded, keeping her mouth shut.
He took his time, for a minute or two, eating his noodles and letting her stew. It gave him a moment to prepare himself. This was a conversation that had been coming for a while. His granddaughter had been pretty good at learning to listen to what he said not the words he used. Of course, she used some of the words from time to time. But words on their own were nothing without the follow through of intention and action. Worse still, emotion.
Lamb licked his lips. “I’m going to tell you about a squirrel named Fremdschämen,” he told her. “Who lives in the very top of a big old tree, with a scary looking owl named Schadenfreude-”
Olivia chewed on her lip as she listened, her head tilted to the side. “Sinde die Deutsche, Oppa?” she asked.
“Ach, ja,” he scoffed around another mouthful of food. “But don’t hold that against them. Now Fremdschämen is a fidgety little squirrel, doing everything for everyone. Scurries about here and there, doing what she does best-”
“What’s that?”
“Keeping stock of all the nuts. And there’s plenty of fucking nuts in this tree, believe me,” he told her seriously. He picked a baby corn up with his chopsticks and held it out to her, watching as she eyed it warily first - looking a lot like her grandmother - before eating it. “The thing about Fremdschämen is that she worries too much.”
“She doesn’t keep her worries in her cage?” Olivia asked, still chewing her corn.
“Oh, she does, but she spends all her time keeping an eye on them. Making sure they have tea and a biscuit. That sort of thing,” he said. There was movement on the landing and he could see a familiar shadow through the pane of glass. “The worries she tends to the most, Livy, they aren’t her own. Cares too much, she does, often about the wrong sorts. Someone drops their nuts - figuratively, mind - and Fremdschämen’s there squeezing her hands together, tail twitching, can’t sit still. She’ll think about it all the time. She’ll think if she’d just done something different it wouldn’t have happened at all-”
“But it’s not her fault!”
“She thinks it is, that’s the point. So she goes about apologising when she’s got nothing to apologise for, taking on everyone else’s worries like it’s an olympic sport. Exhausting old mare.”
Olivia licked her lips, her fingers picking idly at the hem of her tunic as she listened. “Is that bad?”
“It’s too much, is what it is. Carrying about stuff that’s not yours, you get tired quickly. Fremdschämen doesn’t have much space left for anything else. She’s quiet, doesn’t laugh much anymore-” his eyes flicked to the glass again and he watched the shadow shift. A slight movement. Discomfort. “As for the old owl, Schadenfreude, he’s a big bastard of a thing. A Great Horned Owl. Sharp beak. Sits at the top of the tree, watching everything.”
“Does he eat the squirrel?” Olivia asked, eyes wide.
Lamb choked on his mouthful of food. Coughing heartily as he tried to recover. An open bottle of water appeared in front of him, he glanced up as he took it. Standish watched him, her eyebrow slightly raised, with a look that clearly said ‘you brought this on yourself’. He took a mouthful of water and set the bottle on the table. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his mouth. “Not that sort of story,” he said, glancing up at Standish again.
She bristled.
“The owl feeds on something else. When nasty people get what’s coming to them, that’s his bread and butter. Mean little shits who slip on a branch, or get bonked on the head by falling nuts- that’s fucking funny-”
Oliva’s mouth twitched, a glint forming in her expression. Though her eyes darted to her grandmother and back again. Unsure.
“Yeah, see, sometimes it is funny when someone who’s been making life miserable finally cops it. Schadenfreude has a good laugh. Everyone in the woods can hear him. Problem is, if the owl get hungry he’ll start laughing at anyone who falls - whether they deserved it or not. The fall itself amuses him,” he looked at his granddaughter seriously. “That’s when he turns into a bully.”
“Like-” Olivia hesitated. “-Bernard?”
“Like Bernard. Like anyone who joins in because it’s funny to see people hurt.”
“But Bernard’s always horrible,” she insisted, a small whine in her voice. “And Nanny says to talk to my teacher but then you told me snitches get stitches-”
Lamb cleared his throat. He did say that, yes. “Point is, you don’t have to feel sorry for him. That’s a given. You can’t be Fremdschämen getting all wound up about how it is for others. But you also don’t get to be Schadenfreude when someone is hurt just because it feels good - even if they’re a little shit.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “So what am I supposed to do?”
“You decide who you want to be, Livy,” he said. “When you feel that spark that makes you want to laugh at someone else’s trouble - ask yourself how you’d feel in that situation. You don’t have to give a toss about them afterwards, but don’t go making it worse just to feed Schadenfreude. World’s tough enough.”
“And if other kids are laughing?”
“That’s their business. You don’t turn it into a show, you don’t make yourself the ringleader,” he said. “You have to do what Fremdschämen couldn’t and say ‘not my fucking circus’. Everyone gets a swing to the face in life, one way or another, that doesn’t mean you celebrate when it lands.”
He reached for his lunch again, though offered her the chopsticks.
Olivia stood up, one hand resting on his knee. She took the chopsticks and carefully picked through what was left of his meal, taking a mouthful without spilling anything. The noodles were slurped up quickly, making a mess of her face, and she handed the chopsticks back. Settling on the lounge again, this time pressed against him.
Drawing a handkerchief from her sleeve, Standish stepped forward to wipe her grandaughter’s face. “Come on, love, I’ll get you home,” she said, offering her hand once she was done.
Olivia took it and slid off the lounge again. At the door she forced her grandmother to stop and turned back. “Can I still be your trouble, Grandad?”
Lamb looked at her and scoffed. “The day you stop being my trouble, is the day it all goes to shit. As long as you’re not everyone else’s trouble-” he watched a smile spread across his granddaughter’s lips, small and crooked. “-now get out of here, don’t need anymore nuts in this fucking tree.” He noted Standish grimace, but she said nothing.
Finished with his lunch, he got up off the lounge. Across the landing he could hear Standish and her miniature getting their things together. ‘I’ll try to be the right kind of trouble,’ he heard Olivia say and he allowed himself a small smile before stepping back and shutting the door.