Greyer than the fog. Gripped by fear, I walked backward, back into the water, my eyes glued to the grey face. When the seawater was at my lips I kept on walking, wanting to drown myself. I woke with a start in the falling dusk, gasping for breath. Several confused seconds later, I heard the cat whining again.
-
IT WAS ON one of my explorations of Elverdinge’s country lanes that I met him. After the heat of the days before, the gentle sunshine was a relief. He was standing at the junction where the straight drive met the winding Hospital Lane. In his right hand he was carrying a bag and a notebook. His left hand was in his trouser pocket. Beside him was an Alsatian, ears pricked. I didn’t notice them until I was quite close. They were standing as still as the pollard willows guarding the drive. I looked at him, intrigued by the bag and notebook. It was not a sight I would have expected to see that afternoon, on the last Saturday of the harvest month. I slowed down, saw that the dog had put back its ears and stopped wagging, its tail lying motionless beside it like a black snake. I stopped a couple of metres in front of them.
‘Good day, sir,’ the boy said.
He took his hand out of his pocket and signalled to the dog, who instantly stopped growling.
‘Good afternoon, Marcus,’ I said.
He jumped at the sound of his name coming from the mouth of a stranger; he didn’t recognize me.
‘Does he bite?’ I asked.
‘Buck won’t hurt you.’
I pointed at his bag and notebook.
‘Going insect hunting?’
‘Butterflies,’ he said.
‘You will set them free again, I hope?’
‘After I’ve drawn them.’
He tapped on the notebook with his index finger.
‘May I see your drawings? Only if you don’t mind,’ I added quickly when I saw his hesitation. But he carefully placed his bag on the ground and handed me the sketchbook. His fingers looked stubby, the fingertips plump. They didn’t match his lean body.
‘Very nice drawings,’ I said, impressed by the accuracy of the colours and details.
‘Thank you.’
He smiled, scrutinizing me curiously with eyes the colour of hazelnuts. In the distance behind his back, a cart pulled by two draught horses turned into the drive. The man on the box shouted something and a whip smacked down on the horses’ backs. Marcus had heard it too, and turned round. We stood to one side in the grass. I was still holding his sketchbook as we waited for the approaching cart, which left a cloud of dust and sand in its wake.
‘I have to go,’ the boy said in a worried tone of voice.
He grabbed the book I held out to him. The cart slowed down but didn’t stop. With a jerk of his head, the man ordered Marcus to jump on behind. The dog went first with an effortless bound, but the boy ran after the cart stiffly, trying to place his bag and notebook on the jolting vehicle as it gathered speed before awkwardly scrambling onto it himself. The man didn’t look back once. When the whip cracked a second time and Marcus was safely installed in the back, he waved to me.
-
RATFACE’S ARRIVAL WAS a major event. His scream woke me up, rang in my new life. I had never looked forward to anything so much—at six years old, I had already given up hope of ever having a little brother. Leaping out of bed, I opened the dormer window and savoured the morning air for a moment: a mixture of peppermint, verbena and lavender that rose up from Mother’s herb garden. As always, I scanned the primroses and buddleias for sleeping butterflies, wings pressed together, weighed down by dew drops. Then I ran to the door. My fingers already clutched the handle when the realisation dawned on me that I would have to wait for Father. The night before, sitting on the edge of my bed and temporarily adopting my mother’s habit of drawing a cross on my forehead with her thumb before I went to sleep, he had forbidden me to leave my room.
‘Tonight’s the night,’ he said. ‘Tonight, the baby will come.’
And only once everything was over and my little brother was sleeping in his cot, would he fetch me. I looked at the toys Father and I had made for him together—a pull cart, a rocking horse and a castle—sawn and assembled from the planks he hoarded in the shed. Painted with a home-made mixture of birch leaves, beetroot, coffee and egg, prepared in glass jars by Mother. For the horse’s mane, I had searched the fences for wool, which I knew sometimes got caught on sharp protrusions; rubbing against them, the sheep would leave behind tufts of wool like small unravelled clouds. The horse was a white stallion, the mount of knights and princes. I watched the dust in the pillar of sunlight slanting into my room from the window and promised out loud —and for the thousandth time—to look after my brother, to teach him everything I knew, to take him out to play when the sun shone, play games with him at the kitchen table when it rained and protect him from whatever or whoever wanted to hurt him. When my father finally came upstairs, I could tell all was well. His eyes shone. He put out his hand and hugged me. My hand in his, we went downstairs side by side. I bumped my elbow on the banister, but ignored the pang of pain. This was a happy day.
One Saturday toward noon, wanting to help my mother who was preoccupied with my brother, I tried to lift a pot of potatoes from the stove with two thick oven mitts and scalded my arm. I had turned my face away from the hot steam escaping from under the lid and hadn’t noticed the pot was tilting. The lid slid off and a slosh of boiling water splashed over my arm. I dropped the pot, my scream cutting through my parents’ peaceful Saturday routine. A glass bowl toppled over and smashed to pieces on the floor. Mother wailed, Father quickly carried me outside and dipped my arm into the rainwater barrel, up to my shoulder joint. He was holding me like that when I fainted. I don’t know how much time had passed when I came round in the armchair, my mother carefully bandaging my skinned hand that was smeared with a tar-like herbal ointment. There was no supper that evening. When she was finished, my mother washed me, dressed me up and combed my hair, and I walked the long way to the doctor with Father, light-headed and with my pain-free hand in his.
The waiting room was empty, the ceiling high. The chairs creaked at the slightest movement. I counted the heartbeats of the throbbing pain in my hand. At two-hundred-and-fifty-seven, the door opened. I stood up and followed the doctor across a stream of blue tiles to the other side of the corridor. Father closed the door.
‘Let’s have a look at your arm,’ the doctor said to me, removing the bandages. He snorted when he saw the dark-grey ointment and inhaled its stench.
‘What is this?’ he asked Father.
‘A herbal ointment his mother made.’ The ointment was so thick and viscous the doctor wasn’t able to examine the burn. He turned to a cabinet and took out a tube of cream.
‘Apply this daily,’ he told Father in a stern voice. ‘For a week.’
He turned to face me.
‘What’s your name?’
‘David.’
‘Well, David. Come back next week,’ he said.
I nodded. He fixed me with his stare until I was so uncomfortable my cheeks started burning with embarrassment. He had large, brown eyes. Hairs curling at his temples.
Father
