Owning Jacob - SA (22 page)

The smal wooden shack expanded to fil the world. There was a window in it, but from that angle it was impossible to see inside. He decided to wait for Kale to re-emerge and try to catch a glimpse then.

Twenty minutes later his curiosity had given way to impatience. The dusk was settling into a dim twilight, but Kale showed no inclination to come out. Ben wondered what the fuck the man could be doing in there. He was beginning to think there must be another exit when the shed door opened.

Kale staggered out His T-shirt was stuck to him, dark and wet as if he'd been swimming in it. There were livid red marks around his wrists, legs and neck. One ran across his forehead like a bandana. His face was congested and shiny with sweat as he held on to the shed door and gulped air.

'Jesus Christ,' said Ben, awed.

His imagination balked at what he could have been doing to get into that state. The shed wasn't that big. He focused quickly on the dark gap through the doorway. There was an impression of something vaguely mechanical inside, then Kale had closed the door. His limp was even more pronounced than usual when he went over to Jacob.

Stil breathing heavily, though slightly less so now, Kale pointed to the car wing and bonnet that he'd brought into the garden earlier and said something to his son. When Jacob didn't look up from his puzzle, Kale bent and took it from him. Ben's finger pressed on the shutter release as he recorded Jacob's angry protest Kale said something else, but he was wasting his time. Ben knew from experience that Jacob was winding up to a tantrum. He could hear his frustrated cries drifting up the hil side as he tried to grab the puzzle back. Kale withheld it for a few seconds longer, then let go.

Jacob went into a protective huddle, clutching the puzzle to his chest. Kale looked down at him, but whatever he felt didn't show on his face. He picked up the bonnet, seemed to consider for a moment, then laid it on the pile. He shifted it several times before he seemed satisfied, then did the same with the car wing.

He stood in the centre of the garden and regarded his handiwork He didn't move when the kitchen door opened and Sandra came out again. Her expression was pinched and mean as she stared at her husband's back. Ben wondered if he knew what else went on behind it while he was at work. He didn't think so. Kale was the possessive type.

He'd kil her if he found out.

Sandra was speaking. The heat in her words was evident even though Ben couldn't hear them. Kale didn't answer.

His wife gesticulated angrily towards the kitchen, then said something else when Kale stil didn't respond. Your tea's on the table. No, Ben amended, seeing the forms her lips made.

Your fucking tea's on the table. Without turning around, Kale abruptly snapped something at her. The effect was immediate.

She subsided, and in her face was something that could equal y have been either hate or fear. It didn't stop her from moudiing Tuck off at her husband's back as she seized Jacob's arm and pul ed him into the house, but something made Ben think she hadn't spoken the words out loud.

The light had almost gone. He straightened with a groan, kneading his back, and began to pack everything away. When he made his way through die darkening woods, Kale's shadowy figure was stil standing in the garden.

Gradual y, with each visit, he began to discern the patterns that the Kales lived by, the rhythm and routines which ruled them. He was literal y seeing just one side, only what went on at the rear of the house, but from that he was able to draw conclusions about the rest. He picked it up piecemeal, making the hour-and-a-half journey to the woods whenever he could steal the time from work, until he was able to fit the pieces of their lives together like Jacob would a jigsaw puzzle. Slowly, a picture of the whole began to emerge from the separate parts.

On weekdays Kale and Jacob would have left before he arrived. He presumed that Jacob would be taken to school by the local authority's minibus while his father went to work.

But that was part of the front life of the house, the part that Ben never saw. Al he observed was their absence. And the time they spent in the garden.

As far as he could tel Kale hadn't endangered Jacob again.

The lump of metal he'd hoisted over his son remained where it had landed that first time, and Ben was finding it harder to convince himself that it had been anything other than an isolated incident. Yet the rest of Kale's activities there fol owed a strict order. While Jacob lost himself in one of his puzzles, he would exercise and busy himself with his scrap. He would switch pieces around, arranging them with such precision that Ben began to wonder if he was missing something obvious.

Perhaps it depended on the angle. Perhaps, if he could see through Kale's eyes, he would be able to understand what the point of it al was. He even considered the possibility that the entire scrap pile was some sort of free-form sculpture, tried to imagine Kale as an aspiring artist. But no matter how he tried to rationalise it, he always came back to his earlier theory.

The man was a fucking nutter.

His exercise regime always ended with him going into the shed. Even on Sundays, when he would be at home al day, he didn't go into it in the morning or afternoon. Only in the evening, at final light, and Ben would wonder what part of the picture that he was piecing together was concealed by the flimsy wooden wal s. He toyed with the idea of slipping down to look inside when the Kales were at work, but the prospect of having to climb over the high fence in ful view of the neighbours was too daunting.

Often when Kale came out, drenched in sweat and streaked with red weals as though he had been whipped, he would set a piece of scrap on die ground in front of Jacob like an offering. He would sit close to the boy and begin to talk to him, making Ben wish that he could hear as wel as see them. Kale would eventual y stop, looking expectantly at his son as if he were waiting for a response. When he didn't get it he would calmly move away and contemplate the mountain of wreckage surrounding him, his own little kingdom of rust.

Ben would always be driven out of the woods by darkness before he tired of it.

That was the pattern diat Kale and Jacob's back-of-the house lives took. But, except for weekends, they weren't played out until die evening.

During the day die house belonged to Sandra Kale.

No friends or neighbours cal ed round, and if the man he'd seen sneaking out of the garden went to visit her again I OWNING JACOB it was when Ben wasn't there. She rarely did any housework except washing dishes and making the bed. Most of the time she stayed in the kitchen, drinking coffee (instant, with milk and sugar) or just sitting at the table, smoking and staring into space. The main event of her day came at about half past eleven, when she would leave for work.

Sometimes she dressed in the bedroom.

The first time it happened Ben had guessed she was going to get ready when she stubbed out her cigarette and left the kitchen. On the previous occasions he'd been there that had been the signal for the bathroom light to come on, and for her to reappear ful y clothed twenty minutes later, with wet hair that she would dry with a blower next to the sink. That morning, though, she had gone straight into the bedroom.

He waited for her to gather her clothes together and go out Instead she unbelted the bathrobe she was wearing and tossed it on the bed.

The glare on the window restricted his view, but he could stil see her clearly enough to tel that she was naked underneath.

She crossed to the dressing table and picked something up.

Deodorant Her breasts lifted as she rol ed it under her arms, jiggling with the brisk motion. They were low, heavy but not sagging, with smal , very dark nipples. Her stomach was flat and, he saw when she came nearer the window, had lines across it, as though the folds of her bathrobe had dug into her flesh.

Below them the trimmed black stripe of her crotch made a lie of her bleached yel ow hair.

Ben had watched as she pul ed on bra and pants, short skirt and blouse. She had gone out, and as he'd waited to see if she would return a bird clattered in the branches above him.

'" He jerked away from the camera, then gave a nervous, silent laugh. Shit. He began to lean forward to look through the viewfinder again, but stopped.

What the fuck am I doing?

There was no excuse for spying on her when she was getting dressed. That wasn't why he was there, but even as he told himself this he felt a tight band of excitement in his chest. And not just his chest, he realised.

He had an erection.

He didn't know whether to be relieved or disgusted.

Although the unexpected resurrection delighted him, he felt uncomfortable over its cause. And confused. It wasn't as if Sandra Kale was anything special, and nudity was hardly unusual in his line of work. Models changed in front of him as a matter of course, with neither he nor they thinking anything of it.

But they knew he was there.

You closet voyeur, Murray, he thought, but the attempt to laugh it off was a thin one. He didn't stop going to the woods behind the house, though. And he didn't stop watching Sandra Kale.

She puzzled him. Boredom and dissatisfaction were shouted from everything she did. She and Kale hardly seemed to speak, while Jacob she treated with either indifference or barely suppressed irritation. Unless Ben had completely misinterpreted what he'd seen when the man left the house, she was unfaithful as wel . Yet she had helped Kale get his son back, had lied to protect him.

Was stil lying for him.

The week before his next contact day was due, a shoot was cancel ed at the last minute. Ben had gone out the evening before with some people from an ad agency, and as he went into the studio the next morning, he was regretting it. What had started out as a quick beer after work had developed into a ful -blown whose-round-is-it-next session. At some point they'd stumbled off to a Lebanese restaurant where one of them insisted that the mezzes were to die for. Ben wasn't wild about Middle Eastern food, but he let himself be carried along in their slipstream. It was either that or go back to the empty house.

I I I I I OWNING JACOB They'd been led to their table by a waitress who was coldly unimpressed by their noisy arrival. The restaurant wasn't busy, but she took them into a back room, as far away from the main part of it as possible. Only two tables here were occupied, a family group at one and a man and woman at the other. The man was Colin.

Ben hadn't seen him since the anniversary party. What with work and travel ing to Tunford whenever he could, he'd been too busy. And Colin had a new draw on his time himself.

The shared knowledge of his affair - and Colin's clear shame over it - had made them both uncomfortable. Which, Ben admitted to himself, was probably the real reason they hadn't seen each other.

But that night the drinks had diluted any awkwardness he might have felt. And also any subtlety. 'Colin!' he'd exclaimed, delightedly, and it was only when he saw the guilty shock on Colin's face that he realised that the dark-haired woman with him was young, slim and obviously not Maggie.

The girl from the record company, Ben thought. Oh fuck.

But it was too late to do anything other than keep on smiling and go over. 'I wasn't expecting to see you here,' he said, belatedly aware of how tactless that sounded.

Colin's face was crimson. 'Er, Ben, this is Jo.' Ben had said hel o. The girl seemed pleasant enough, but with a cool look about her he didn't entirely like. He had excused himself and gone back to his own table, and for the rest of the evening he had avoided so much as glancing across.

Colin had said a quick goodnight when he and the girl left, but Ben could see from his face that he was stil flustered.

He regretted meeting them, not only because he knew it had spoilt their evening, but because it complicated things.

Before, he had only known about Colin's affair in abstract terms. But having seen him and the girl together, he felt implicated in it Not that he could say he actual y blamed 185 I Colin.

Christ knows, he had spent long enough trying to dissuade him from Maggie before they were married. He just couldn't bring himself to approve either.

He was thinking more about that than the day's shoot the fol owing morning when he arrived at the studio, until Zoe told him that it had been cancel ed. The designer had fal en out with the model ing agency over unpaid bil s, and been blacklisted as a result.

"You don't seem very upset,' Zoe said, when she broke the news.

He was already wondering how quickly he'd be able to get to Tunford. 'It can't be helped.'

'I know, but that's the third this month. It pisses me off.' The others had been postponements rather than cancel ations, but Zoe took them al personal y. At one time so would Ben, but not any more. He had seized those opportunities as wel .

'I wondered about phoning that guy who wants some portrait stuff doing,' Zoe suggested. 'The writer. He said he wanted it as soon as we could fit him in.' Ben struggled to remember who she meant 'Oh … no, it's too short notice.'

'It's worth a try.'

'No, let's leave it.' He could feel her disapproval. 'I tel you what, why don't you do it?' The?'

"Yeah, why not? You're good enough.'

'But he wants you.'

'Tel him I can't do it. Say we're ful y booked, but you can squeeze him in yourself.' She was looking doubtful. 'Do you think he'l go for it?'

'Like you said, it's worth a try.' He went to put on his coat as she mul ed it over.

'So what wil you do instead?' she asked.

I've got some things to sort out.'

'Anything I can help with?' p OWNING JACOB

'No, it's okay.' He was at the door. 'Give that writer a ring and see what he says. I'l see you tomorrow, okay?' She nodded, but she stil didn't seem happy as he went out. He stopped off"

at an electronics shop and then headed straight for Tunford. It was late morning when he arrived at the woods. He parked in his usual place by the overgrown gate and took his bag and case with the lens in it out of the boot. An elderly couple walking a Yorkshire terrier gave him an odd look as he climbed over the fal en wal , clumsy with al the equipment. He gave them a confident smile and hoped they didn't recognise him, or realise what he was carrying.