The Book of Rapture (16 page)
Read The Book of Rapture Online
Authors: Nikki Gemmell
Whatever it is, your children are caught. This persistent boy wants to play, he wants kids to fill up his days and they’re forced to go along with it and all you can do is watch. Can’t read him. It’s rare for a child to be so closed off. You’re unnerved by his self-possession. His adult veneer. He likes everything just so; is used to rules; gets upset when your lot bicker among themselves; tells them his ears are hurting and wearily admonishes them to be quiet in a grown-up voice. You bristle with indignation as if a fellow parent has told them off. If he was on a sleepover at your house you’d be worried about what he’d be reporting back; your kids seem so big and naughty and energetic in comparison, slippery and cheeky, uncontained, rough. He’ll tell them when they’re getting too much, scold them to share, stop the fuss.
He comes from a tight house, you can tell; he’s spent his life being reined in, is relentlessly neat, his clothes never bear a mark. He likes discipline. Expects it in others. You can’t imagine any other parents liking him except his own; you’re so competitive about other kids, really wouldn’t need to hear how fabulous he is at everything; which you can see, infuriatingly, would
be the case. You wonder about his true self, the veering off-course that exists in everyone, the possibility of an explosion underneath. What he would do if he worked your lot out? He’s a tattle-tale, you’re sure of that, it’s in his voice. The constant worry harangues you night after night.
Do not be envious of each other; and do not outbid each other; and do not hate each other.
Bullets. Outside. Not far but not too close. A conversation of rat tat tats.
‘Kalashnikov,’ Pin, knowingly.
‘Three blocks away,’ Tidge, ‘tank attack.’
‘Raid,’ Mouse, ‘resistance.’ The noise changes to short pops.
‘Pistols!’ The boys all laugh. ‘Snap!’ And the three of them fire pretend machine guns out the window.
Soli’s alone in a handstand against the wall. ‘So who exactly are we fighting, guys,’ she languidly enquires, ‘when we’re out of this place?’
‘Your lot.’ Tidge giggles at Pin. ‘You got us into this mess.’
‘Excuse me,
your
lot are the baddies.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Soli arcs gracefully up.
‘We’re the ones trying to fix this country.’
Your kids stop, stunned. ‘Have you
been
out there?’ Your daughter angrily asks. ‘Have you
seen
what’s happening?’
Pin covers his ears and chants la la la and Tidge strides into the thick of it with arms outstretched and says, ‘Stop, guys,
stop’
, because he hates conflict. ‘Let’s make a gang,’ he announces, ‘top secret,’ all the while looking at his sister, pleading with her. ‘Let’s say … the Getters, huh?’ because the friendship has to be maintained, because it’s the only way out.
‘Okay,’ Soli says finally.
‘Rule number one,’ Tidge announces gleefully, ‘no one gets left behind! We can never abandon a Getter comrade.’
‘Or betray them,’ Mouse adds drily.
Pin jokes that it’s how his father got ahead and Soli says this isn’t the grown-up world, they’re far too screwed up for us and Pin rolls his eyes and smiles and you wonder about that adult sneer, you wonder what he’s gleaning in this place. Tidge says he’s got a secret handshake and he takes the left hand of Pin and places it palm down on his right. Squeezes. ‘Your turn,’ he says, and the boy takes his hand and does the same and Mouse takes Soli’s and smiles secrets at her and apologies and regret. She smiles, warm, back. ‘No one gets left behind,’ she whispers fierce, trying to bind all four of them, blood-tight, to strengthen around this frail quartet a net of friendship that will hold firm.
‘Hey, we’ve got to do that blood thing, too!’ Pin says. ‘You know, where you prick your fingers. Blood brothers. Seizing the day and all that. Come on.’
Your children groan. But do it because they must.
Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.
His smile turns him into someone else. They coax it from him whenever they can. To become human to the enemy not objects of hate, you’ve drilled into them the importance of that. He’s not laughed once while he’s with them. ‘Am I that unfunny?’ Mouse finally enquires.
‘Yep.’
Your boy drops to the ground, flings his arms wide, waits to be shot.
‘No! I mustn’t laugh. It’s my asthma. It restricts my breathing. The doctor says I shouldn’t risk it. I haven’t laughed for ages. I’m aiming for the
Guinness Book of Records
. You watch.’
‘You’re kidding,’ Tidge says, his eyes dancing up.
‘I’m serious,’ Pin protests. ‘I’ve got an inhaler and everything.’
‘It’s all in your head,’ Soli declares.
And so the covert mission begins. To get him laughing, to get that shirt hanging out and the hair mussed up. Alphabet burping, gurning, flicking coins from elbows, break-dancing on their heads, all B’s tricks. Pin stares as if they’re the most peculiar children he’s ever met. They persist. Mouse flips his eyelids inside out until they hurt like a contact lens dried up. Pin’s mouth curls, a bloom spreads across his cheeks. ‘Ah ha!’ Soli points in triumph and Mouse flips his eyelids back. They’ll have him yet.
A threefold cord is not quickly broken.
‘You’re really lucky, you know.’
‘Um, why Pin?’
‘Because no one’s ever telling you what to do. You can stay awake until midnight if you want. And you never have to do your homework, or eat broccoli, or wear a button shirt.’
‘Yeah, but it’s horrible not having a home to go to,’ Mouse shoots back. ‘We have this football, on our lawn, that’s waiting for us …’ He pauses, your heart races.
‘Don’t give up,’ Pin says in rescue.
A shining quiet.
‘You’re really lucky your dad says goodnight to you every night,’ Tidge says finally, soft. ‘Ours used to do that. Blow out the light, he’d say, like it was a candle, and it’d turn off exactly when we puffed.’
‘You can have mine too if you want! He’ll adopt you.’
Your children smile. Because it’s a start. A ridiculous one but a start nonetheless. And this stranger in their midst seems to have a quality their father loves so much —
empathy
— and he’d be punching the air at that. He despises callousness because he says it’s a failure of the imagination, a failure to put yourself in someone else’s place.
‘No one gets left behind,’ Soli suddenly whispers, and each
child puts a palm on a hand and squeezes tight.
In the shining quiet.
Take away love and our earth is a tomb.
But their nights. Stained by scrawny sleep. Addled by B’s vanishing. What could have happened? Was this abandonment planned? Is he hurt, discovered, gone? His apples are pitted like old people’s faces with no teeth, even the flies have left in disgust. The fruit growing its fur is the last of him left.
‘We’ll have to throw it out, guys,’ Soli instructs.
‘No,’ Mouse pleads, ‘please.’
‘Why?’
‘Because B is a thread to Mum and Dad. The
only
thread we’ve got left. Without him they’re gone … and we’re all alone.’
‘It’s going to be all right. Dad promised he’d come, he
promised.’
But her voice betrays she no longer believes it.
Be islands of refuse unto yourselves.
‘Maybe we’re meant to be sorting this out for ourselves.’ Tidge is sitting under the window holding the doll. ‘Maybe Pin can help. What do you think, guys?’
‘Uh-uh.’ Soli rushes in. ‘Do not even go there.’
‘Why?’
She squats in front of him. ‘Because we can’t have your little mate knowing about B for a start. No matter how friendly he might seem he’s his father’s son. Always. Never forget that. He’s not meant to know people like us, let alone be our friend. We can’t have his dad
ever
knowing about this room. It would be disastrous.’
Tidge gazes out of the window. ‘There are street kids out there. I’ve seen them.’
‘I have too.’ She stands behind him. ‘But it doesn’t mean they’ve got a better life.’
‘It’d be more friends. And a step closer to home. And maybe Pin could come too, maybe he wants a different life, just like us. You don’t know him. You’re not
listening
to me, you’re not listening.’
Soli makes a little kissing noise of disapproval and runs her fingers up the huff of her brother’s back.
Experts are agreed that the man who labels things ‘bad’ is thereby making it impossible for himself to see them as they really are.
He never behaves like he’s meant to. His hackles don’t rise when he sees them. He never humiliates them; it’s as if they’re just kids, nothing else; he’s not seeing anything different; not seeing a colour or a religion or a race. You can’t get your head around it. It can’t be this simple. ‘I feel the opposite of lonely here,’ he says with a smile one day, flopping on the bed, ‘whatever that is. Filled up.’
He brings gifts. They start anticipating his arrival. For Tidge, any stick-like object that has the potential to be a sword. For Soli, nail polish and glitter pens. For Mouse, one time, a strange white sphere with green stains.
‘Um, thanks. What is it?’
‘A pukka. For polo. It’s the only ball I could find. Until you can get your other one back.’
‘Huh?’
‘The one on the lawn. That’s waiting for you.’
Heart, swell.
‘Gee. Thanks. But I can’t catch, you know.’
‘Mate, you are
all
talk.’
‘I can’t catch, Pin.’
The boy lobs the ball and Mouse reaches up and snatches it crisp; ‘eeeeh,’ he squeals and Pin stands there smiling, all his paleness gone and colour in his cheeks, and your daughter’s staring with her hands on hips, nodding, appreciating. ‘There you go.’ He laughs. ‘What did I tell you, dude?’ grinning at little
Mouse who’s responding with, ‘Thanks, mate, thanks,’ over and over, he can’t stop. Because he’s feeling quite someone else, suddenly, someone better and bigger and straighter than himself. Because he caught a ball, the cool way, overhand, and he’s never done that. His smile is one huge watermelon split. Because no boy except his brother has ever looked at him like this. Like he’s whole. And in that golden moment your awkward, self-conscious, clotted little Mouse has his entire world filled up and you love this stranger for that, you will never forget it. Something has changed in this room, loosened; you’d battened down the hatches for so long but now, softly, something is breaking out.
How great a matter a little fire kindleth.
What is this brightening within you, what? Like a varnisher’s hand passed over a painting, you feel plumed with light. Combusted into peace and stillness and rest. It is so calming and strong through you.
A chink, just a chink, into Motl’s momentous journey. Something like the beginning of an understanding, yes.
More things are shewed unto thee than men understand.
‘So what’s your dad
really
like?’ Tidge, nonchalantly, as all four of them are lying on their backs on the bed, counting spots on the ceiling, and everyone’s getting a different amount.
‘What do you mean?’ A new voice.
Careful, Tidgy, tread light. Not now.
‘Well, you know’ — he skates merrily on — ‘sometimes you can love a person, but not really … like them. Know what I mean?’
‘Pardon?’ Pin sits up. A stoplight in his voice.
Mouse covers his face with his hands, grimacing, needing his klutzy pickaxe of a brother to stop this right now, fast.
‘My father’s done a lot for this country.’
‘But my mum says if no one speaks out… then lies become truth. And the truth can get lost.’
Oh, boy, boy, boy.
‘So what exactly does he
do
, your dad, can he help us?’
‘Do? He works incredibly hard to make this country a better place. And it’s not easy with people like you. We need men like him. He says he’ll die working because of me.’
‘To keep you in computer games,’ Mouse throws in, trying to loosen everything up.
‘Thank you, yes.’
‘But do you have any idea what’s really going on? Really truly?’ Tidge persists.
‘Would you like to see? His baby is the Persuasion Unit. Have
you heard of it? I can arrange for you to be shown if you’d like.’ The voice with the grown-up already in it.
‘No thank you,’ Tidge murmurs.
Soli’s hand is at her mouth like she’s going to be sick.
Mouse rolls away from them all and curls tight on the edge of the bed. Because he’s heard of this Persuasion Unit, late at night, when Motl and you have been talking about your country and then you’ve stopped and gone very quiet and the weight of that place has sat between you and your little boy has felt very cold, and small, and stunned, in his hiding hole under the stairs, winded by the listening and knowing he shouldn’t be eavesdropping on your talk let alone writing it down. He should be tucked in his bed in the warm snuggly quiet, not knowing any of this. What grown-ups do. When they’ve lost their light hearts.
Pin gets up. Walks out. All the cosiness in their room vanished like a candle blown out. Your heart pebbles with it.
Do battle against them until there be no more seduction from the truth.
‘You consider us as nothing more than mosquitoes. Not human beings. It’s as though we don’t exist as people to you.’ What one of them said to you once.
‘And what do you consider us?’ you managed to stumble, wrong-footed, in response. Thinking of the rhetoric that inflamed your country then inflamed your work: ‘Do unto them now as they shall surely do to you tomorrow.’ We are all animal underneath. And some of us, abhorrently, are given the licence to release it.
Why
were you so seduced? You were always so puzzled, in your twenties, by Yeats’ words, ‘the worst are full of passionate intensity.’ How come the ‘worst’? Surely he’d made a mistake, surely it’s what you must be?