‘You don’t say much, do you?’
Luke looks down at the floor.
‘You might find this hard to believe, boy, but I dreamt about you once. You had no face.’
Luke raises his hand to his face. It is still there. There is a strange hissing sound, which frightens him; he realises that his grandfather is laughing.
‘You can understand that missing face,’ says the old man. ‘Your mother kicked me out of her life before you were born. What do you think of that?’ He splashes water about and snorts. ‘She’s like that,’ he says. ‘She can be obtuse. She becomes an obtuse mess in moments of crisis. Mass, I should say, a doughy but unyielding mass of silence. It has an almost religious quality, you know, a religious mass. You can’t really penetrate that, can you? It’s baffling and tormenting, and of course utterly demoralising. To suffer like that in silence; to turn the other cheek – it’s an abuse of power and a bloody lie, my boy, but I suppose you know that, better than most. Oh yes, you’re an expert yourself.’
Luke feels the weight and pressure of the words. He doesn’t know what they mean, but he likes the sound of ‘obtuse’ and ‘tormenting’ and ‘bloody lie’.
‘Obtuse or not, she kicked me out.’
He looks up at his grandfather; Turner’s eyes are focused on him now, glittering cruelly.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve met your father?’
Luke shakes his head.
‘Has she ever told you about him?’
‘No,’ replies Luke, his first word to his grandfather.
‘Of course she hasn’t, with bloody good reason, too.’ He lies back in the tub again, and mutters wearily, ‘But she should have done something about your foot. She’s let you down there, old son. Not my business, of course . . .’
Luke limps out of the bathroom.
Arthur calls him back; he stands silently in the doorway.
‘Has she ever told you?’
Luke shakes his head, not knowing what question he answers. His grandfather rises messily out of the tub and seizes a towel.
‘She should have told you. She should have told you that you’re good-looking. No, that’s not quite right: you’re a beautiful child.’
Luke turns round and limps off to his room.
There is a tarnished mirror above his work table. He climbs onto his chair and kneels on it to look at his reflection. A solemn brown face stares back. He is slightly plump, with full lips, dark eyes and curly black hair. His grandfather is wrong. It is an ugly face; the image makes him feel mildly ill. But he forces himself to look at it, and after a while the figure splits off from himself and becomes a picture of someone else. He thinks he can see that other person grow older, and become a dark, strong person, grow into a life that isn’t his own. He prefers then to look at the space behind and around the image. He peers in at the sides of the mirror, both sides, trying to see more. It is a clear world that he cannot get into – everything in it is hard and clean and real. It is a better world.
* * *
Luke goes out into the sun. Even though it is early, the light is harsh and makes him squint. He wanders round the side of the house to where his grandfather’s car is parked, a decrepit Volkswagen bus, orange and white. He slides open the middle door and climbs in. He pauses, hit by a ripe smell of human habitation, mildew, petrol, burnt oil. But he doesn’t mind the smell that much because it is sharp and vertiginous – he can position himself in it, stay at a certain level – and his curiosity drives him on.
It is brutally messy inside. Worn blankets, clothes, cooking utensils, a Cadac stove, jerrycans, food tins lie on the seats and on the floor. A pair of boots, a blown pack of Vienna sausages, scores of books, sections of rubber tubing, an old portable typewriter. Luke doesn’t know what the latter is, though it interests him greatly. He presses down on one of the buttons – marked e – and a grey arm rises from the middle. He tries a different button, and the same thing happens. He lifts a small silver lever, and part of the device ratchets noisily and swiftly to the side, giving him a fright. He leaves the machine alone, assailed by anxiety that he might have broken it.
Under one of the middle seats, he finds three yellowing typescripts, the paper blistered by exposure to moisture and sun; but then the world swims, revolves once, and lands with a definite, inaudible thump. It is too hot in the bus, the stink has become unbearable.
Luke realises that this is Arthur Turner’s house. It is a travelling house. He realises that his grandfather is a different kind of person to his mother and himself. He is a stranger who lives in a rich, violent mess, and doesn’t care about the things that his mother cares about so strongly. At a level deeper than thought, Luke welds together composites: his grandfather is a man animal, an everyday savage.
He stumbles out of the bus, head first, and falls onto the white sand and straggling seagrass, then somersaults, and rests on his back. The earth and air outside are fresh, and he grows solid again, bit by bit.
He goes back into the house. Arthur Turner sits at the kitchen table. He looks different, now that he is clean. His skin is pale, his limp grey hair falls across his forehead. Now his grey eyes are tired and shrewd. There is a cup of tea before him, and an untouched slice of toast.
‘Do you want this?’ he asks, pushing the plate towards Luke.
Luke silently takes the toast and bites into it.
‘Don’t tell your mother,’ says Arthur. ‘She’s trying to feed me up, but I don’t eat breakfast.’
Luke doesn’t reply; he is too busy with the toast.
‘She thinks I’m too thin. I’m not too thin, I’m too old. In fact, in my view, your mother’s too fat.’ He interrupts himself, quite irritably: ‘Don’t you ever speak, child? You’re depressingly like your mother. I’m surprised you can speak at all.’
Luke swallows, and says, ‘I can speak.’
Arthur raises an eyebrow and takes a sip of tea, ignoring the boy’s answer. Eventually he shakes his head and says, dogmatically, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘I can speak,’ insists Luke.
‘I tell you what. If you finish that toast and pass the plate back here, and don’t tell your mother you ate it, I’ll admit that you speak all the time.’
Luke drops the remaining toast on the floor and stares imperiously at his grandfather.
Cruelty flickers in Turner’s face, in his eyes. ‘I can see your father now. In your features, in your demeanour. But you don’t know your father, do you?’
Luke is trapped. He doesn’t want to answer; but if he doesn’t, it will prove that he can’t talk.
‘I know my father,’ he says. It isn’t true. He has never seen his father before.
‘Of course you do,’ nods Turner grimly. It is clear that he doesn’t believe Luke. ‘I know your father,’ he says.
