The Kind Folk (5 page)

WHERE IT BEGAN

"So that's why Terry used to call it a Johann Christian," Freda says and tells Sophie "That was his name for a mechanical digger."

"Did he teach you about music, Luke?"

"We like good music too," Freda protests. "You've heard Maurice put it on when you've come for dinner."

"I know you do," Sophie says, having been honoured by movements from Mozart and Beethoven and more than one Strauss, along with as many other highlights as the disc had space for. "I was just thinking of Terence."

They're in the large back garden of the thatched house where Luke grew up. Other mourners occupy the wrought-iron furniture or congregate beneath the trees. Luke suspects they've brought their buffet portions outside rather than risk having Freda clear away their paper plates the instant they're put down anywhere in her house. He used to retreat out here whenever he sensed that she thought he was playing with too many toys at once—more than a couple meant he was making a mess. He might play a game that seemed to shape faces in the spiky depths of the hedge, or imagine that the murmurs of the village spoke of secrets he needed to learn, or lie on the close-cropped lawn to see what the sky would produce for him. He remembers seeing fossils, the remains of gigantic creatures that must be as old as the stars; perhaps their descendants still lived in the dark the sky hid. A spinal cord the colour of the moon is growing more enormous and losing definition overhead as Freda says above the thunder of the airliner "We're all thinking of him, Sophie, and you helped."

Luke owes at least some of his childhood fancies to Terence. They're a way of remembering him, but Luke feels as if he's fending off the bereavement—as if he's bracing himself for a greater loss. He's nowhere near identifying it when Sophie says "I wouldn't have presumed, but you did ask."

She played Bach fugues on her guitar while the mourners assembled and as they left the crematorium—melodies Terence used to hum, if less tunefully. Now she hesitates and says "I'm only sorry Freda or Maurice won't know him."

Freda blinks and blinks again. "What are you saying, Sophie?"

Sophie rests one hand on her midriff. "We've decided she'll be Freda or he'll be Maurice."

Freda takes her hand and Luke's, calling "Maurice? Maurice? Did you hear?"

"Hang on till I see what's up this time," he says to several workmen Terence employed. "Hear what, chuck?"

"They're going to call their baby after one of us, whichever it turns out to be."

"Good on you both. Give me a few minutes here, will you? I'm just in the middle of talking business."

"He's really pleased but he can't show it when there are a lot of people," Freda murmurs. "You used to take after him, Luke."

"Who says I don't still? Let me get you both chairs, and what else would you like?"

"That's Maurice right enough. He's thoughtful when he remembers to be," Freda says and gives Luke's hand a parting squeeze. "But I'm not, am I? You don't want to be standing round in your condition, Sophie."

"Freda seems to like me on my feet, or Maurice does."

"Why, you've brought it back," Freda says as if remembering a dream. "I was just the same when I was having—"

She visibly wishes she hadn't relinquished Luke's hand. In a moment she says "Do you know what I think Terence would have loved? A bit of Luke's show while Luke was talking about him, and never mind it was a funeral."

She's thinking of Luke's eulogy from the angular unadorned pulpit, where he'd felt as though he was performing an impression of a celebrant. While he hadn't claimed Terence was his uncle, he'd stopped short of saying the opposite, which left him feeling even more like a deceiver. "I wouldn't have wanted to offend anyone," he says.

"You could have said it was for Terry. You could do it now."

"I haven't brought your chair."

"I'll be sitting enough when I'm old."

"Maurice won't want me distracting people while he's in conference."

"Who's saying what I want?" Maurice says and ambles over. "That's settled. Terry's boys are fine to stay on if we merge the firms."

Luke senses Maurice feels he has regained his masculinity, even if Maurice wouldn't put it that way—the masculinity threatened by learning he wasn't Luke's father. Observing this with such detachment makes Luke feel disloyal if not worse, but Freda is saying "Do Terry's favourite. Be the Welsh headmaster."

"He used to ask Luke to do it at Christmas," Maurice tells Sophie. "You remember, son."

While Luke has kept his memories of the festival—the tree that sprouted lights, the doorways festooned with them as though magic places lay beyond, the impression that the house was full of hidden presents, the songs wending their way through the village—he feels as if all this belongs to someone else. "I'd like to see it," Sophie prompts him.

"You reathly would."

She looks puzzled, though not unamused. "Say that again?"

"You'd reathly like to see Mr Futhlalove address the school."

"Do his face," Freda urges.

Luke could fancy that they're willing him to become somebody he's not, but hasn't that turned out to be his life? He lets his chin drop, lengthening the lower portion of his face, and shrinks his mouth, all of which seems to squeeze his voice high and thin. "I'm Mr Thlewethlyn Futhlalove and I'll be patrothling the school to make sure there's no sithly behaviour..."

Several mourners have turned to watch and are hushing their companions. "Do his walk as well," Freda cries.

Luke begins to waddle back and forth as if his legs are shackled. That's how a teacher at his school used to promenade in the classroom, and the face belongs to another one, but the language began with Terence—-with his song about Llangollen and pollen, which Luke apparently improved upon. Though it feels like abandoning more of his personality, Luke interlaces his fingers on his stomach and waggles them every time he lingers over mispronouncing a word. "I'm warning you I'll have no buthlying in my school. Not on your nethly, as they used to say when I was your age. No puthling anybody's hair, that isn't just a peccadithlo, and no name-cathling either. I don't want anybody being told they're smethly for a start. And don't be afraid of spithling the beans, because that's just the height of fothly. If you report bad conduct that isn't tethling tales, so I don't want any shithly-shathlying about it. If I think there's been any scoundrethly behaviour then by gothly I'll have all the suspects in my office for a grithling..."

Most of the mourners are laughing. Onstage Luke often feels as if he's yielding up his individuality to the expectations of the audience. Doing so can distract him from self-consciousness, but just now he seems to be hearing himself say "I hope I'll see no apawthling spethling this year. We don't turn out duthlards here. And make sure you conduct yourselves civithly. No mithling about in the corridors and no strowthling along, and no lothling against the walls either. I'll be muthling over what else you can do for the good of the school. You may think I'm a wathly with a swothlen head or even that I'm off my throthley, but if you abide by my rules you should have a jothly good time ..."

His imagination falters as the headmaster starts addressing pupils by name—Dolly, Molly, Polly, the Halliday twins—and he brings the routine to an end. 'Just throw a shithling," he says when the mourners applaud.

One of Terence's demolition team repeats the line with relish, and another says "Terry told us you used to do that. He said we'd not believe how young you were."

"How young was that?" Sophie is eager to learn.

"Too young to know what some of those words meant, I should think," Luke tells her, though he recalls being sufficiently precocious to unnerve his present self. "You were working for him back then," he says to Terence's veteran.

"Since before you were born, lad," the man says and frowns extra wrinkles onto his weathered leathery face. "All right to talk about it, Maurice?"

"Nothing to do with me, Rudy."

"I was going to say Terry was over the moon when your boy came along."

"The whole lot of us were."

"I'm only saying now you know he hadn't anything to do with it, but you'd have thought the babby was his own to hear him. I thought I was nervous when mine were on the way, but I never had the shakes like him."

"Blame the stuff he was putting in himself."

"Smoking doesn't do that to you, Maurice," Rudy says and doesn't pause to add "I gave it up years back."

"Carry on. You've still got a job."

"That's all, mostly." When Maurice holds him with a gaze Luke wouldn't call inviting, Rudy says "He always had a photo with him. Your lad when he was in his crib, and you'd hear Terry talking to it if he didn't know you were about."

"What was he saying?" Freda seems to feel they ought to hear.

"You thought he was praying, didn't you, Dan?"

"Did till I had a listen," Rudy's large slow curly-haired colleague admits. "More like baby talk. Not what I'd call words."

"He was always showing us the photo," Rudy says, "and telling us how much like you two the lad was growing."

As Maurice lets his lip sag while Freda responds with an uncertain smile, Luke thinks it best to intervene. "Did you work away from home a lot for Terence?"

"We never went far," Dan says. "When he went off it was mostly on his own."

"We thought he hired men where he went," Rudy adds, "but Eunice in the office told us not. Maybe he'd got a woman somewhere."

As Luke reflects that many more than one would be needed to account for all the travelling Terence noted in his journal, Maurice says "More like it was another thing he'd got into his head. He was never the same after you pulled that house down in Toxteth."

Perhaps Dan and Rudy feel he's holding them responsible, since they don't answer. "Why," Sophie says, "what happened?"

"Some young scum hid in there from the police," Maurice says, "and the cellar fell in on him."

"They got the body out," Dan risks contributing, "and then the place needed making safe."

"You mean," Luke says, "someone having died there bothered Terence."

"Not that he ever let on," Rudy says. "It was all the faces we dug up in the cellar."

"Don't," Freda protests as though she sees them rearing up from the earth.

"They were only carved on stones," Dan assures her. "All the same feller. Looked like he thought he was some god in a museum."

"One of the lads smashed most of them," Rudy says. "He didn't like the look of them. It's the only time we saw Terry lose his rag. Fired the lad on the spot, and the only stone that wasn't broke he took home with him."

"First I've heard," Maurice says like more than one accusation.

"Do you know what he did with it?" Luke finds he needs to learn.

Dan and Rudy glance at each other and at Maurice. Eventually Dan says "Rudy asked him once."

"Said he slept with it under his pillow."

When nobody else speaks Sophie asks "Why?"

This time the men don't quite look at each other, but Dan appears to have delegated his workmate to mutter "Expect he meant it made him dream. He said things came to him."

Luke remembers an entry in the journal about the stories Terence told him, and blurts "When's all this supposed to have happened?"

"We knocked the house down," Rudy says, "the year before you were born."

Luke can't think what else to say, and the conversation drifts away from him. Soon enough the mourners start to leave, and he and Sophie promise to visit again soon. As they drive home alongside the river, they're paced by a sliver of moon that appears to be waiting for the night to fill some of it in. At the Pier Head he swings the car uphill towards the town and immediately down the ramp under the apartments, where he has an odd sense of hiding from the moon. The electronic door tilts up, and he coasts into the numbered space next to Sophie's Clio in the underground car park.

The converted cellar mimics the slams of his door and Sophie's. As she heads for the stairs in the lobby he retreats to the steps down to the car park. "You start the coffee," he says. "I'm not sure if I locked the car." Once he's certain that she won't be coming after him he opens the boot of the Lexus. The glare of the security lights leaves Terence's journal lying in a trough of darkness like a baby's grave. Luke balances the ledger on the edge of the boot, and every page he turns gives rise to another shadow. The entry he wants is close to the start of the journal, which he shuts and locks away as soon as he has memorised the details.
IT
WAS
STRONG
HOUSE,
the entry says and lists an address in Toxteth.

THE REMAINS

As Luke turns the car along Mulgrave Street, Christ leans out from the church on the corner. He's spiky as a bolt of lightning made into a man. He looks poised to dive from perching high up on the concrete wall and start a race along the dual carriageway of Princes Avenue. Luke imagines Terence inviting him to wonder what the lithe metal shape might be chasing or attempting to outdistance, but that doesn't offer any insight into Terence—it just reminds Luke that he has very little idea why he's here or what he's looking for.

The street he's following is no help. Most of the buildings look younger than he is: compacted terraces where the houses seem squeezed thin to fit their boxy gardens, a mosque built of peach-coloured bricks not much bigger than playthings. Above the low roofs a wide blue sky decorated with a few white wisps like shavings of a moon adds to the impression of newness. Luke drives almost to the end before turning along a side road, which brings him to Amberley Street. At least, it does according to the street guide in the glove compartment, but now the location is occupied by a car park.

Terence gave him the guide when Luke bought his first car. So the street has been demolished, not just the house that's mentioned in the journal. Luke finds a space for the Lexus at the far end of a rank of vehicles opposite the car park, which is enclosed by a spiky metal fence. He's beside a pallid pebbly terrace of thin houses, guarded by a wall on which scraps of litter caught by coils of barbed wire flutter like a substitute for foliage. Windows hardly large enough to frame a head and shoulders are visible over the wall. Luke crosses the uneven road and sees that the car park is next to a grassy patch of waste ground, where a path leads from a gateless entrance in the fence. Perhaps the path will let him find a way into the car park, even if he can't see why he should bother. He's heading for the gate when a voice says "I'm watching you."