Owning Jacob - SA (21 page)

He hadn't sunk that low. Not yet Besides, I'd only be wasting my money. He wondered who he was to have felt even briefly smug about Colin's infidelity.

At least Colin could stil get it up.

Further along another girl was walking slowly up and down in the dim blue glare from a closed newsagent's window. She had dark hair and her face was in shade, but for some reason Ben thought of Sandra Kale. His gut tightened again, and for an instant there was a tug of something so dark and il icit he didn't recognise it. Then it was gone, leaving an unspecified sense of depression. He tried to lift himself out of it by thinking about going to Tunford the next day, but that only made him feel woe. It seemed to him now that there was something not quite wholesome about his eagerness to return. The justification that it vas for Jacob rang false. He was struck with the sordidness of what he was doing, skulking around with his long lens like some sweaty voyeur.

And enjoying it.

His self-loathing was so thick he could taste it as he paid off the taxi driver and went inside. He stood in the dark hal way, listening to the sound of the untenanted rooms. The house pressed in on him, claustrophobic in its vastness. No Jacob. No Sarah. He realised he was crying. He lashed out and punched the wal and felt the jolt sear from his knuckles to his shoulder. Goaded by the pain, he seized the cherrywood cabinet and tore it down. It toppled against the wal on the other side and lodged at an angle. There was a crack of breaking wood, a chime of the telephone fal ing off. He thought of how he and Saiah had bought the cabinet when they were first married, and the stab of remorse incensed him. He kicked wildly at it, punishing himself with each splintering blow, stamping on it until it crashed over sideways and its mirror shattered in a cascade of silver fragments.

Ben stood over it, panting. The rage dwindled and vanished.

He looked at the shattered cabinet and felt a sadness so great he thought he would never climb out of it He stepped over the wrsckage and went into the lounge. There was enough light coming through the window to guide him to the sideboard.

He groped inside until he found the bottle of vodka and took it with a glass to the settee.

Then he sit down and set about getting drunk

ŒIII

The light was shining directly into his face. It seemed to have a

physical weight, pressing on his temples and eyelids like a vice.

He turned away from it, trying to retreat from the pain back into sleep. The movement made it worse. His head throbbed and there was a stiffness in his neck that stabbed from his shoulder to his skul . Dimly he became aware that something was wrong. His posture was cramped and uncomfortable, the surface under his head too firm to be a pil ow.

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes.

A textured pattern, like seaweed, swam into focus. Ben blinked at it, but the distant panic at not recognising what it was paled in the face of the way his head was hurting.

The pain seemed to increase with consciousness, until final y the discomfort of his position outweighed his reluctance to move.

He rol ed over. The banging pulse behind his eyes made him shut them. When he tentatively opened them again he found himself looking up at the living-room ceiling. He was on the settee. The seaweed pattern had been the tassel ed edge of a cushion he'd had screwed up beneadi his neck. He lay there as memories of the previous night returned to him.

He sat up and sucked in his breath at the sudden pain.

Holding his hands to his temples, he slowly swung his feet to the floor. They struck something hard and cold. He looked down and saw an overturned tumbler lying in a stained patch of carpet. The memory of vodka nauseated him. He took a few deep breaths through his mouth until the feeling had passed, and then stood up.

He'd been expecting the clamour in his head, but it was stil almost enough to make him sit back down again. He swayed on his feet, waiting until the worst of it subsided, and then gingerly made his way into the halL It was the first real hangover he'd had since he'd been out with Zoe.

His body felt as though it had been taken apart during die night and badly reassembled, so that none of die parts fitted together properly., m He paused when he saw the wrecked cabinet It was ruined beyond any hope of repair, but just then he felt too il for the regret to make any impression. One self-punishment at a time.

He took two paracetamol, fol owed them with a glass of liver salts, and splashed cold water on his face and the back of his neck. Then he sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands and waited for it to stop hurting.

The self-disgust he'd felt the night before had been pushed aside by the more immediate misery of his hangover. It seemed inconsequential now, and he was already forgetting it as he looked at the clock and estimated how soon he could pul himself together and go to Tunford.

When the worst of the shivers had passed, he poured himself a glass of orange juice and went to load his camera.

By lunch-time his hangover had subsided to a general malaise.

It lingered as a dul throb behind his eyes as he peered through the viewfinder at the Kales' back garden. Kale and Jacob were in the central clearing surrounded by scrap. Jacob sat in the car seat while his father moved pieces of scrap around. Sandra was at the kitchen sink, stil wearing her bathrobe. During the half-hour that Ben had been watching, none of them had spoken.

He'd hoped he might see them al together, since it was a Sunday, and he'd been so eager to reach his vantage point that he'd almost blundered into a group of children playing in the woods. They were too close to the huddle of oaks for him to risk going to it, so he'd had to wait until their game took them out of sight before he could go down to his den.

He'd urinated igainst a nearby tree before he'd settled himself inside, knowing that if the children returned he might be stuck in there indefinitely. He'd heard them - or another gang -

playing in the distance, but so far they hadn't come back. He hoped the dying leaves stil dinging to the branches would be enough to screen him if they did. As he set up the camera and lens, he entertained notions of camouflage netting before deciding that would be going too far. He wasn't doing anything wrong, he told himself.

Not real y.

He massaged his temples as he watched Kale place a last piece of scrap and stand back to regard his handiwork. Ben couldn't see what difference any of it made, but he presumed there must have been some reason. Even Kale wouldn't shift heavy lumps of metal around for the fun of it.

He yawned as Kale went inside the house. Jacob played on, regardless. He had a puzzle game in his hands, a complicated arrangement of steel hoops, and every now and again he would stop and hold one close to his eyes. Trying to catch a glimpse of the spectrum in the reflected sunlight, Ben thought, smiling.

He seemed wel enough. There were patches of what looked like oil on his shorts and T-shirt, but that wasn't exactly surprising considering his father's choice of garden furniture.

There was a movement in the doorway. The bul terrier hobbled down the steps like a muscle-bound golem. Ben had forgotten about the dog. He wil ed Kale or Sandra to reappear as it sniffed around the garden. There was no sign of either of them. He drew in his breath as it approached Jacob and lunged up at him, but the animal only licked the boy's face. Jacob irritably pushed it away. The dog wagged its tail and flopped down at his feet, tongue hanging from its grinning mouth.

Ben had risen half out of his seat. He sat back down, the thud of his heart echoing painful y in his head. Now Kale came out of the house again, carrying something. He stepped in front of Jacob, blocking him from Ben's view, and let the object fal to the ground.

It was a crumpled car wing. The chrome rim of the headlight was stil set in it, spiked with jagged shards of glass.

Kale disappeared inside again and returned a few moments later with a dented car bonnet. It rocked unevenly on the floor when he dropped it next to the wing. Ben focused on them as Kale went back inside. They were the same colour and appeared to be from the same car. It had obviously been involved in a bad crash. The damage was too comprehensive to be from anything other than a col ision.

Something about that pricked his consciousness. He shifted the camera to look at the scrap pile itself, adjusting the focus until the individual pieces became clear. Mangled car roofs, radiators, doors, bumpers. There wasn't a smooth or undamaged surface anywhere. Not one. He hadn't real y considered it before, except for the danger it posed to Jacob, but now he saw that, like the bonnet and wing, everything there showed the scars of some horrendous impact. He panned around the tortured shapes, and for the first time it came to him that Kale wasn't just col ecting junked car parts.

It was accident wreckage.

Ben sat back and rubbed his eyes. His head was throbbing badly. He wondered if he wasn't reading too much into things.

And what did it matter anyway? Perhaps Kale was simply a morbid, as wel as mad, bastard. But the feeling remained that this was significant in a way he couldn't yet grasp.

He bent back to the camera. Kale was back in the garden.

Ben watched as he continued to move the scrap around, painstakingly shifting and realigning pieces of it as if their precise position actual y mattered. Every now and then he would pause to consider the effect, but Ben was at a loss to see any sense to it al . The changes seemed pointless, yet too deliberate to be whol y random, as though there were a purpose to it only the ex-soldier could fathom.

But what the fuck was it? The door opened and Sandra Kale appeared. She had dressed. Her face was made up, her hair combed. Ben guessed she would be going to the pub for the afternoon shift. She looked from her husband to Jacob and said something. It was like watching a film without sound. Kale didn't appear to hear her either. Sandra stared at him, thin-lipped, then jabbed two angry ringers up at his back and flounced back into the house.

The door slammed behind her. A heartbeat later the sound of it carried from the bottom of the hil .

Ben grinned. Sunday harmony chez Kale.

After she'd gone, Kale brought out two plates of sandwiches and gave the smal er to Jacob. He hunkered down on the floor beside him and they both ate, in silence as far as Ben could tel .

At one point they were sitting in almost identical positions, the boy in the car seat, his father on the ground, chewing in unison.

When he'd finished, Kale threw some scraps to the dog, which had been sitting hopeful y at their feet Jacob copied him and went back to his puzzle as Kale took the plates inside.

Ben ate his own sandwiches while he waited for him to reappear. Jacob remained in the garden, moving only once to urinate against the wooden wal of the garden shed. Ben shook his head, angry at this evidence of his new parents' laxness.

[[ΠIt was more than an hour later before Kale came into the

'garden again. Ben had begun to wonder if he'd gone out somewhere as wel , leaving Jacob at home by himself. He had changed into a creased T-shirt and shorts, and now he began a series of stretching exercises. The section of engine he'd hefted over Jacob's head lay near by. Ben felt a rush of adrenalin. He waited, both hoping for and dreading what was going to happen.

But Kale ignored the blunt metal weight. Instead he picked up two house bricks, one in each hand, and began slowly raising and lowering them, rotating his arms and varying the movements so that al of his upper-body muscles were included in the workout. It reminded Ben of t'ai chi, an almost graceful exhibition of control. Only Kale's injured leg spoiled the effect, nailing him to the same spot like a wooden post By the time he dropped the bricks, dark patches of sweat were staining his T-shirt He was breathing deeply but steadily as he went and stood behind the car seat where Jacob was sitting. He looked

down at the puzzle his son was playing with. Then, without warning, he bent and lifted both the seat and Jacob straight above his head.

The boy's eyes widened in surprise, but instead of the panic Ben expected his face split into a delighted grin. Kale began rising and lowering the seat while Jacob smiled above him.

BeJi began taking pictures, but then stopped. Jacob was laughing now, and Kale was actual y smiling himself as he effortlessly bench-pressed his son. Ben felt a sense of exclusion and loss crystal ise inside him as he watched. Those two smiles seemed to undermine any reason he had for being there.

But he made no attempt to leave.

Tucking action man,' he muttered as Kale smoothly set the seat down and went back to his exercises.

The afternoon passed without further event. Kale continued to workout while Jacob played with his puzzle. He didn't so much as glance at the engine embedded in the ground, but Ben continued to watch, al the same. When Sandra Kale returned from die pub, he switched his attention to her. She seemed no happier now than when she'd left, peeling potatoes at the sink as if she bore them a personal grudge. She didn't tel her husband she was back, and if Kale was aware of it he gave no sign. It was like i dul soap opera, Ben thought, one in which the characters didn't do anything or talk to each other. Yet there was something hypnotic about it. He _ found himself drawn into the viewfinder's reality, fascinated I by the Kales'

lack of communication, the absorbing minutiae of then lives.

It stopped him thinking about his own.

It was becoming harder to see. He looked up from the cainera and found with surprise that the light was fading. He hadn't realised it was so late. Or that he'd been there s# long.

Rubbing his stiff neck lie decided to pack up. He didn't relish tiie prospect of walking through the woods in the dark. Œ

He reached down to remove the lens and saw the tiny figure of Kale disappear inside the garden shed.

He had gone in there after lifting the engine over Jacob's head, Ben remembered, looking through the viewfinder again.