After Brock (4 page)

Nat doesn't want to be assaulted by the beams from this guy's eyes any longer. So determinedly he screws his own tight shut.

But Luke isn't deterred by this childish response.

‘Attention moves to take in The Clees, and The Strettons, even The Wrekin. Yes, Nat, you'll always, to the end of your days, be able to say you had the cops going
all round the Wrekin
.' He doesn't just smile here but actually laughs, and appears to have the nerve to think Nat'll laugh too. (As if his thoughts ran in this kind of way. This journo is judging others by himself, which, in his pathetic case, is a bad thing to do.) ‘And then everybody was beginning to think. Well, if the boy isn't in the vicinity of Lydcastle, then mightn't “heights” apply to Snowdonia? Not too far away for a lively adventurous lad… By now operations must be costing police and tax-payers a pretty packet, I'd say. But then they shouldn't be thinking of anything so sordid as costs in a matter of life and death, should they…?'

‘For Christ's sake!' For halfway through this q-and-a exchange – which has in truth degenerated into an ‘a's session on the part of the questioner himself – Pete Kempsey, who was listening at the base of the stairs, has walked up them again to hear what his visitor's saying, and what Nat, as it were, is not. But this last comment about police expenditure (something which has been tormenting him these last days) has brought him to the closed door. And hearing the compound word ‘life-and-death' is just too fucking much. He must put a stop to it.

The sound of his approach has made Nat open his eyes on the world again all right. There's his dad in the doorway, all red in the face, puffed and obviously furious. And to be reckoned with.

Nat feels a rush not just of gratitude but of respect for him.

‘For Christ's sake,' Pete goes again, ‘lay off him, Luke. I won't have my boy given any more of this. He's not well, for a start. Can't you see that, you dickhead?'

   

His interrogator, he's glad to see, wasn't expecting an eavesdropper, which was a bit dim of him. (This is his dad's house, after all.) Got carried away by his own sadism. And now he does seem (grat-ifyingly) embarrassed at being caught out, like those blokes guilty of Special Rendition who've argued they didn't know what they were doing. Another thing – he clearly hasn't expected sloppy-seeming Pete Kempsey to speak as a man of moral authority.

Pete hasn't finished. ‘Print what you like, Luke, in that arsewipe you write for,' he goes, ‘we can both stand it. The important thing is that Nat is safe and sound and here. With me. Alive. Compared with that, I don't give a toss!'

But Luke Fleming is far less disconcerted than Nat hoped.

‘Agreed, agreed,' he says, ‘I'm human, aren't I?' (‘And what does
that
say in your favour?' Nat mutters to himself, for his thinking on this very subject has undergone a significant change up on the Berwyn Heights.) ‘But every one of us, Pete, has a duty to be truthful. Otherwise we're done for. Accountability's the name of the game in this world, whether you're politician or – or a successful A Level candidate. And if the truth is hard to come by, then we must get at it, whatever it takes. Any journalist worth his salt will agree.

‘So when we have the truth about Nat's whole story crystal clear before us, then yes, Pete, and a big yes: “Nat Kempsey's alive and well,” we'll say and hold one mammoth party. Invite guests from all over the Marches, the whole West Mercia Constabulary included, and every member of the BBC
Midlands Today
team, right up to the great Nick Owen himself, and, obviously, every inhabitant of Lydcastle, down to the last cat and dog…'

Pete Kempsey gives a weary, wheezy sigh – like an old con-certina being squeezed for the last time – as if he seriously doubts his ability to counter-attack here.

‘But till that happy time…' Luke ends, ‘the truth, and nothing but!'

Nat, well, he silently recalls: Joel Easton. After all the stuff he's been through, he's very nearly forgotten the guy's appearance. Curly red hair, freckled face, a button nose. Taller than himself. And a slight stoop too. But of course he was bending forward some of the time Nat was talking to him, to tickle his dog, Mister.

Well, Joel's proved as decent and kind as he appeared. Never occurred to Nat that precisely this decency and kindness of his would lead him to act, as it seemed to him, in his acquaintance's interests, but, in brute truth, clean against them. Joel went that extra mile all good folk are supposed to go. And he's likely done for the boy he befriended as a result.

That parcel. When Joanne Gladwyn burst into the kite shop and handed it to Pete, who of course recognised the handwriting on the label, he started to tremble so badly he felt his body was falling to bits. And his ex, Izzie, (who also at once recognised her son's scrawl) started to shake as well, despite years of training in calm through meditation. Envoys from the dead, they both said to themselves, trophies to stick on a shelf to prove their son, Nathaniel Robin Kempsey, once lived on this earth.

   

There were five items in the jiffy bag:

   

Map of the Berwyns

Postcard of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant

Postcard of Tan-y-pistyll

Teach Yourself Welsh

Journal: clothbound, unlined ‘Paperchase' notebook 

   

The map was in pristine condition. No sign it had ever been used. But both parents knew Nat to be a singularly neat boy, the kind that handles things so carefully they look literally as good as new. On the cover it says, bilingually: 

   

Ordnance Survey Arolwg Ordnans 255

Llangollen & Berwyn, Ceiriog Valley / Glyn Ceiriog, 

Showing part of Offa's Dyke Path /

Yn dangos rhan o Lwybr Clawdd Offa

   

There's a picture of two guys riding mountain bikes on a rough track with birch trees behind them, and behind those, an alarmingly dark night sky.

The postcards were of unremarkable views; they had obviously been bought for the sole purpose of being put inside the jiffy bag to be received as the longed-for key to Nat's whereabouts. In
Teach Yourself Welsh
, to judge by the red pencil marks, Nat had reached page 48, Chapter 4, Section 6. Both Pete and Izzie found it hard to imagine him applying himself to the sustained learning of any language, so were surprised he'd got so far.

   

How old are you
?

Beth yw eich oed chi or (lit.)      
What is your age?
i.e.

Beth yw'ch oed chi?                    
How old are you?

Rydw i'n un deg wyth                  
I'm eighteen

   

‘Eighteen' was right, Nat himself turned eighteen on March 16. And for the last days Pete and Izzie had had to face the ghastly possibility this might turn out to be his last birthday. That he'd never go beyond the statement: ‘Rydw i'n un deg wyth.'

And the final item? The journal. Pete had seen Nat writing in a handsomely bound book during his summer stay in Lydcastle, and wondered if he was keeping some record of his days and thoughts. The book was an unlined production of excellent quality, and Pete knew a lot about stationery because before the kite shop he'd first worked for, and later run, Sunbeam Press. Thanks to his godfather, Oliver Merchant.

If he had kept a Journal when Nat's age, and could read its pages now, might he not be better able to come to terms with his eighteen-year-old self, who – for obvious reasons – was haunting him now night and day. That eighteen-year-old Pete who'd left his native Herefordshire town of Leominster one bitter January night, with his friend Sam Price at the wheel, his mind, like his driver's, possessed by news of strange sights, and who'd ended up climbing a Berwyn mountainside beside the very waterfall shown on the postcard Nat enclosed.

   

The great waterfall gleamed white through the darkness…

   

He wouldn't go down that road yet. Would not remember his own adolescent eagerness to disappear and what had brought it about. Would postpone for a while the recognition of the invin-cibility of death, and the appalling, obfuscating greyness that made up its wake.

   

That notebook. It was by reading it that Izzie and he understood (as they were intended to) that the Berwyns were where they must search for their missing son. Like too many diaries, Nat's journal was very detailed for the first days of writing, and then trickled out into little more than a series of jottings, not all of them coherent. Still, Pete learned a lot from it, as much as he needed and far more than he cared to. And the police (to whom it had to be passed, though naturally Nat's parents made a photocopy for themselves) found it invaluable too.

Journal of Nathaniel Robin Kempsey

   

Yes, there
is
life after A Levels 

Doings and reflections June-September 2009

Weather: assume temperature this afternoon is 80º Fahrenheit 

To convert to Celsius:

Subtract 32 from your figure – that's to say, subtract 32 from 80 and you get 48

Multiply new figure by 5

5 x 48=240

Divide this last number by 9

Result 26.7

Temperature in Celsius!

Excellent for my first day of freedom.

But is that what it is?

   

This morning when I clambered off my bed, every section of me knew that in an hour's time I had to forget about my body and the whole being it housed, and just become a moving physical item that must tap out on a keyboard x number of words on y and z as they issued from the brain. Tomorrow I shall get up quite differently, restored to myself. And I'll let the sun pour through my closed eyelids, and imagine that when I open them, I do so as another sentient creature: a baby, for instance (was I really one once?) or an old man in care who can't stand up straight or see properly (which I may become one day, and that's impossible to accept too) or a cat, particularly the long-haired ginger tom who comes onto our balcony, or one of the many foxes in our neighbourhood (though, of course, early morning is when, after a night's adventuring,
they
slink back homewards to sleep).

   

Dad said, ring me when the whole thing's over, won't you, Nat? That's the nearest he's come to expressing any interest whatever in my exams. I've worked out that
he
must have taken
his
A Levels in 1974. Considering the heavy weather he makes of doing the accounts for the shop, I can't see him sweating away at revision – or even sitting in an exam room. But that's a failure on my part, I suppose. His amazing general knowledge must have come to his aid at some point in his school career surely.

   

Went home for shower and change of clothing, then took myself to the park near my school and my home. That's Brockwell Park which may well be the Centre of my Universe. Until I find another one, up in some mountainous region or other. I found a place free on my favourite bench by the lake with all the water-fowl, sat down and rang Dad (as requested!!!) on my mobile.

But was he expecting to hear from me? No, plainly not. Sounds like he's been dozing. Is he interested? Well, not much! No more than the next man (who wouldn't be my father). In fact I'm pretty sure he'd forgotten that it was today, Tuesday, that I finished. Typical! All he seems concerned about is me coming up to Shropshire on Sunday to start work for him. He sounds pretty wound up about a £600 power-kite he's got for some young guy who hasn't yet turned up to buy it, and not only can't be contacted by phone, but has failed to answer
four
emails. That's the twenty-first century for you, says Dad, and now is simply not the economic climate to be mucked around by macho retards with no cash. Well, I could have told him that straight off. He falls for these posers regularly… Finally (I must have listened to three full minutes by now) he does get round to admitting he knows what day it is, by asking me how I'm celebrating. Has Mum organised anything? Are me and my mates, me and Josh planning some grand piss-up? (Dad always remembers Josh, because he came up with me last summer to help in the shop, and went into the fields to try out new kites for him. You've got to do something that benefits him for Dad to take proper notice of you.)

I say nothing about Mum's plan for the evening, in case, without meaning to, I sound disloyal. I sincerely respect her good intentions here, but it'll be Doug, Doug, Doug again, I feel sure. Josh doesn't have
his
mega-party till Saturday night. And the morning after that, which may well be a ‘morning after' in the usual sense, I shall risk Sunday train services, and travel up to Lydcastle to become my dad's right hand for a few weeks. And now of course he must tell me for the hundredth time that he can't manage the same wages as he paid me in the Christmas holidays. Oh, pay me what you can, I say, just make sure there's enough for us to eat. But he doesn't laugh, in fact sounds a little insulted. ‘I don't think, Nat, malnutrition's a problem I'm much worried about at the moment.' Which is a morally wrong thing to say because malnutrition
is
a problem for millions on our planet right now. Then I appreciate it was me who made the ‘joke' in the first place. Must watch myself here.

Dad's back to the shop. He talks about… Malaysian hummers, some good new Indian fighters (Tukkels and Tassel-tails) ‘and two beautiful Barrolettas'.

‘Barrolettas?'

‘Nat, I told you about them when you came up at Easter.' Sounds aggrieved. ‘They're kites made in one remote village in Guatemala – Santiago Sacatepequez, to give it its proper name.' (And Dad
would
give it, wouldn't he? Whereas I've just Googled it.)