He Wants (3 page)

‘He's only three,' said Lewis. ‘He won't remember this.'

The shortness of the boy's memory is astonishing. His mother asks him if he wants to go to Pizza Hut for tea, and he says yes, so she tells him they will all go to Pizza Hut for tea. She puts on the boy's coat so that, she says, he will be warm on the way to Pizza Hut. They leave the house and get into the car so that, she tells him, they can drive to Pizza Hut. When they have been driving for a minute or two, he turns to his mother and asks her, ‘Where are we going?'

When the broken toenail lifted after a few weeks, the skin underneath looked unsettlingly vulnerable. The new nail grew back a long time ago but the boy still mentions it.

The boy is now almost the same age as Lewis is in the photograph on the mantelpiece. ‘I'll take him sledging,' thinks Lewis. ‘When it snows I'll take him sledging on a tea tray.'

Also on the mantelpiece are a handful of birthday cards – one from Miranda, one from his father that says ‘Joy', one from Ruth that says, ‘You're 70!' It reminds him of Danny DeVito in
Throw Momma from the Train
shouting to his mother, ‘You're alive!' It reminds him of those messages that are placed by the bedsides of people with memory loss: ‘It's Tuesday. Your name is Lewis.' He has always been a Lewis. There has only ever been one person who called him Lewie, or Louie, as this person wrote it, filling him with vowels.

4

He wants to fly

W
HEN LEWIS WAS
eighteen years old, his father took him to see Billy Graham. Lewis thought at first that they were going to America, that they would fly above the clouds, like Icarus. They would fly west, through half a dozen time zones, and having reached adulthood in England, where Lewis could legally buy beer, he would find that he was underage again. He imagined Florida and the Sun Belt and felt warm just thinking about being there. He imagined himself wearing shorts on a beach.

This did not happen though. His father was not taking him to America but up to Manchester, where Billy Graham was appearing at Maine Road football stadium. In the week before they went, his father talked ceaselessly about this man they would see, and it was clear to Lewis that they would not only see but
experience
him. Lewis's mother got fed up of hearing about it, but Lewis did not. He stayed close to his father, alert to any mention of Billy Graham and the imminent trip to Manchester. His father fairly hummed with anticipation; it radiated from him like heat, exciting Lewis too.

On the day of their journey, settling into their seats on the coach, his father said, ‘You can feel the buzz,' and when he had said it a few times, Lewis almost could.

The coach driver, wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, a dark tie and sunglasses, made an announcement from the front of the coach. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we'll be taking off in a few minutes. I hope you enjoy travelling with us today,' he said, as if what he really wanted was to be an airline pilot, as if he might also tell them, as they travelled, what their cruising speed was and what the weather was like at their destination.

There were many of these coaches bringing people to the meeting, tens of thousands of people arriving to see this man on this night alone. Despite the heat, Lewis's father was wearing his suit. He'd put a clean hankie in the jacket's top pocket; the tip poked out like a tongue or a flag of surrender. He'd polished his shoes, combed his hair and had a shave. He was wearing Brylcreem and cologne. He looked like a man going on a date. All he needed was a bunch of flowers clutched in his hand. He had smartened Lewis up too, fussing over him as if grooming him to be presented to someone important. He'd insisted on clean underwear, just as his mother always did except that was more for getting run over in, for the doctors to see. (She was equally mindful of firemen. Lewis would have chosen to sleep naked but his mother said he had to wear pyjamas because if the house burnt down in the night he did not want to have to go outside with nothing on, for the firemen to see him like that, in all his glory, did he?)

Inside the stadium, this crowd, the like of which Lewis had never seen before, waited. They reminded him of himself perched on the branch of a tree, wanting to jump off and just fly. If only you could want it hard enough it might really happen. His father marvelled at the vast choir and hoped that he might hear his favourite hymn sung by so many voices, ‘He Is Mine' filling up the space.

When Billy Graham came forward to the microphones to lead a prayer, there was a hush, and then he spoke, and he sounded to Lewis like a politician announcing that the world was at war. He talked, though, about the forgiveness of sin, while Lewis's father, sitting up very straight, sitting very still, listened intently. Lewis dared not make a sound. Silently, he sucked his sweets to nothing.

When the moment came – when he was called, while the choir was singing – his father got to his feet and went to the front in his wedding suit. Lewis almost followed him but by the time he'd thought about it, he'd lost sight of his father and Lewis was still in his seat.

While Lawrence was up, he made friends with a local couple. He introduced them to Lewis after the service. ‘This is Lilian,' he said, of a young woman in a gay dress, and Lewis said, ‘Pleased to meet you, ma'am,' as if, said Lawrence, shaking his head, he thought he were Elvis Presley. Lewis had put out a hand but Lilian laughed at it, reaching out to pinch his cheek instead. ‘And this is John.' Lewis, turning to Lilian's husband, did not say, ‘Pleased to meet you, sir,' or hold out his hand. He did not say or do anything, he just looked at John, who was looking back at him with bright blue eyes, and Lewis can hardly believe to this day that blue in an iris is an
absence
of colour. It was so hard not to stare at this startling blue; it was so hard to look away.

Lilian, meanwhile, was saying to Lawrence, continuing a conversation they had started before, ‘You must come. We want you to. Do join us.'

‘It's very kind of you,' said Lawrence, ‘but my son and I have a coach to catch.' He put his hand on Lewis's shoulder and Lewis prepared to leave, but still these three stood talking and when Lewis and his father went to look for their coach, it appeared to have gone.

‘We don't live very far away,' said Lilian, who had walked along with them. ‘Come and spend the night with us.'

‘That's very kind of you,' said Lawrence again, and Lewis waited for his father to say, ‘but that won't be necessary,' but instead he said, ‘thank you.'

The couple led the way to their car. ‘You're welcome to stay for as long as you need,' said Lilian.

‘We're a bit out of town,' said John, ‘but I'll drive you to the train station when you're ready to go.'

Lewis and his father were driven through what remained of that June day to a house on the outskirts of the city. As he drove, John talked about the help he could do with in the garden, digging up the vegetables, and about the animals they had, so that Lewis was picturing a big house surrounded by land, a long, dusty driveway with chickens running around, a veranda at the front and a number of dogs. He was surprised to arrive at a small house with a square of tarmac at the front and a cramped garden behind, not a dog or a chicken to be seen.

They were shown inside, directly into a sitting room. Invited to make themselves comfortable, they sat down on the large sofa, whose brightly coloured fabric was covered in protective plastic that creaked beneath them. A magnificent chandelier hung from the high ceiling, dominating the small room. Beneath it, on a table, was a goldfish in a bowl.

Lilian went to the kitchen and came back carrying a tray. In order to put it down, she pushed the fish to one end of the table, the water sloshing violently inside the little bowl. She handed out glasses of flat lemonade before sitting down in a plastic-covered armchair. She shut her eyes and for a moment Lewis thought that she had gone to sleep, but then she fanned her face with her short fingers, made an exclamation about the heat, and called for the dog. They talked about the meeting in the stadium. Lewis's father said, ‘I'm a new man.'

‘I'm full of light,' said Lilian.

John turned his blue eyes on Lewis. ‘And how about you, Lewis?' he said.

Lewis, swallowing his flat lemonade, shrugged and said that nothing had really happened to him in there.

‘Don't you want to give your heart to Jesus?' said John. ‘Don't you want to know that you're going to heaven?'

‘It will come,' said Lilian. ‘Give it time.' She called again for the dog. ‘It's as hot as hell in here,' she said. Catching her husband's chiding glance, she added, ‘It really is hot.'

The side window was open and a whirring fan stood near it, facing out, as if to keep the sultry air from getting inside in the first place.

Lilian poured more lemonade and said, ‘This room gets all the sunshine and gets so hot the dog won't come in here.' She called again, more insistently, but there was no sign or sound of the dog.

John said to Lawrence, ‘So tell me where you come from,' and Lawrence told him about the house on Small Street, but he was talking about his childhood, his Uncle Ted, a widower, ‘who,' he said, ‘I loved more than I loved my own father,' and his handsome cousin Bertie who was like the brother Lawrence did not have.

Lawrence asked about baptism. ‘Can it even be done at my age?' he asked.

‘It's never too late,' said John.

Lewis was picturing a font, a dribble of water on the forehead, but, said John, it would not be like that. Lawrence would be immersed. When he came out of the water, it would be as if he were entering the world anew.

When they had finished the lemonade, Lilian showed them the spare bedrooms. Of the smaller one, the box room, in which Lewis was to sleep, Lilian said, ‘The window sometimes slides open a crack. If it bothers you, just tell John and he'll come and nail it shut for you. The dog will sometimes sleep in here so just keep your door closed if you don't want him to.'

Lewis left the door open. When he woke, wearing no pyjamas, in the middle of the night, he did not know where he was. He thought that he had fallen asleep closer to home. He was remembering the sound of horses' hooves on the road outside, ringing through the still afternoon, echoing off the houses, sounding like the drum beat of a samba band, as if there were a carnival; he thought that he had heard an ice cream van playing ‘Greensleeves' in his sleep. When he realised where he was he felt lonely.

Lying in John and Lilian's spare bed somewhere near Manchester, Lewis listened for the sounds of the city just outside, but he couldn't even hear the dog. He wanted the night air to come in, bringing the city with it, but the night air was unmoving and even at dawn the only sounds that came in were birdsong and the milkman doing his rounds. Lewis, who wanted to feel that he was on the brink of the city, and who had wanted the dog to come in and sleep on his bed, was disappointed.

In the morning, he expected to leave, but instead, after breakfast, his father offered to help John in the back garden. What they harvested was cooked by Lilian for the evening meal, and then it was bedtime again. When Lewis woke from those dreams of his, he found on the floor a pair of underpants and a T-shirt that did not belong to him.

‘Did you find them?' asked Lilian, when he got downstairs. ‘I put some of John's things on the end of your bed. You can wear them while yours are in the laundry.' And so they stayed another day and another night, and again Lewis slept with both the window and the door slightly open, but he did not see the dog. It seemed to feed at night when the house was cooler. Lilian went from the sweltering kitchen where she laboured to the stifling front room to rest. John spent all day in the small garden, stripped to the waist in the sunshine. He should have been a pioneer farmer, thought Lewis, seeing him resting with one foot on the edge of his spade. He could imagine John standing in the middle of a cornfield in Canada or Australia in the 1800s, holding a scythe or the reins of a horse.

In his garden, John dug up small potatoes and skinny carrots. He picked fruit from the dwarf apple tree and the gooseberry bush, and Lilian turned the fruit into pies with not quite enough sugar in. Lawrence helped him, and Lewis would have helped too but he found it too hot and avoided doing anything much during the day. Instead, he sat on the shady front steps, gazing in the direction of the city or watching the birds flying overhead, watching them land. He thought about migration, about birds that were programmed to fly south to France, and he wondered if they ever wanted to fly further than they should, whether any bird had ever tried to cross the Atlantic and found that it could not get that far in one go.

He hung around in the kitchen, doing small jobs for Lilian, slowly, standing at the sink.

‘How old are you?' asked Lilian.

‘I'm eighteen,' said Lewis.

‘He's already drinking,' said Lawrence, coming into the kitchen with John, and the three of them stood there looking at Lewis until he had to turn away and still he felt the burn of their gaze on the back of his neck; he thought he could hear their heads shaking.

Lilian made her own lemonade and jam, and John pickled his own beetroot. Lewis had rather expected to discover that they made their own home-brew, but none ever appeared. In fact, Lewis discovered that John was a man who poured gifts of alcohol down the sink, leaving the kitchen rich with the scent of the wasted wine. Lewis had never had wine. He had not yet found anything he liked to drink, unless he mixed lemonade in with lager. He would have liked a cold shandy while he sat out on the steps, like the man of the house, like a rancher, watching the sun set. Instead, Lilian brought out tumblers of juice, saying to him, ‘Take these to the men, would you?' Lewis took two tumblers around the side of the house, towards the back garden where the men were working. As he approached the corner, he heard their voices, his father and John talking. ‘He's got this friend,' his father was saying. ‘He's a bad influence. He's got Lewis drinking and I don't know what else they get up to.'

‘Are they going with girls?' said John.

‘No,' said his father. ‘Not girls.'

There was a pause in which nothing was said, and then John said, ‘Ah.'

Later, Lewis ran a deep bath and lay in the water with his shoulders and knees sticking out. He thought about baptism and how one could access a bright new world. Could it happen when you were naked, he wondered, or only when you had your clothes on, a clean pair of pants? Could it happen when you were alone or did someone else have to be there, immersing you? There probably had to be a reading from the Bible; what came to mind were the Thou Shalt Nots, the rules of behaviour:
Thou shalt not kill
,
Thou shalt not commit adultery
,
Thou shalt not steal
,
Thou shalt not bear false witness
,
Thou shalt not covet
(
anything?
he wondered), and,
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

In the morning, they said their goodbyes to Lilian at the door before going with John into Manchester. Lilian called for the dog to come and see them off too, but when they left she was still calling.