The Gift (14 page)

“I don't see we've any right to any of it,” said Mrs. Palozzi.

Mr. Palozzi shrugged.

“I only happened to be holding the camera,” said Davy. “Sonia could easily have taken all the pictures herself.”

“If I know Sonny, she was having hysterics on the floor,” said Mrs. Palozzi.

The argument circled around a couple of times and finally came home to roost on Mr. Boland's original suggestion.

“Okay,” he said. “That's provided your parents agree, lad. I'll just drive you up there and settle it. I'll try and get you the money tomorrow, in time for a little extra Christmas shopping.”

“No hurry, no hurry,” said Mr. Palozzi. “It all goes into Sonia's dowry.”

“Does it just?” said Mrs. Palozzi. “I'm taking fifteen percent commission, too.”

Mr. Palozzi slapped her plump buttock, grinning.

In the car, driving cautiously along the empty Sunday-morning streets, Mr. Boland said, “Do you read the
Examiner
, lad?”

“Not very often, I'm afraid, sir.”

“Don't apologize. The point is I do a piece every week called ‘Personality Spot.' Usually it's about some local worthy, the new fire chief or a retiring headmaster, someone like that, as dull as ditchwater. I thought it might make a change to do you—Spenser Mills boy makes Fleet Street big time. What do you think?”

“I'm going to Wales on Tuesday,” said Davy cautiously. “We go there every holidays to stay on our grandfather's farm.”

“Lucky kids. It must make a change from all this,” said Mr. Boland. They had come over a slight rise and there lay half of Spenser Mills, new as a new toy in the winter brightness.

“Oh, yes,” said Davy. “Our family have lived in that valley for four hundred years.”

“Have they just? I can make something of that, too. The different way of life, and all that. Got any snaps of this farm?”

“I think Penny took some last hols. You'd do much better to interview her, sir. She's cleverer at putting things than I am.”

“I'll do you both,” said Mr. Boland.

The interview went well. Mum and Dad were down at the pub, but Penny was cooking lunch, in a good mood, and voluble. They read the result in the crowded Christmas train going north, because Mr. Boland had been thoughtful enough to come down to the station with a page proof of the paper. There, strange in the dark fresh ink, were photographs of the two of them “looking as though
we
were wanted by the police,” Penny said, and one of her snapshots of the farm. Mr. Boland was very hot on details. Everybody's exact age and address were there.

“That'll amuse Granny, seeing her name in print,” said Penny. “It's a pity there isn't a picture of Dad, though—I'd like her to see how he's changed.”

“They've been very careful about leaving him out—all the papers. Haven't you noticed? I expect the police told them to.”

“Well, it's all over now,” said Penny. “I think Dad might even keep his job—they can't fire the father of a local hero, can they? And the police have got everybody except your friend Wolf.”

Dave looked out of the window, not really hearing the whine of the rails or seeing the flat fields slithering backward. He thought about Wolf, the least important member of the gang. Mr. Black Hat's dog. He remembered the whirling nightmare of images that had swept past the site office, and how the whole world seemed to loom and tower to crush the running man. He forgot Mr. Venn, stunned on the frozen ruts. He forgot the little old workman who had run across waving his arms and was now lying in the intensive care unit of the hospital.

“Poor Wolf,” he muttered. “I hope he gets away.”

9

DAD

Granny was different, changed even since half term. It wasn't anything obvious, but even on the first evening Davy realized that her movements had become slower; she had always been deliberate, but now she moved as though she were afraid of hurting herself. The pink and white of her cheeks had separated into distinct patches, and her little mouth, though it still could not smile, was no longer firm.

Next morning, Christmas Eve, Davy came in from the cowshed and found her stirring the porridge for breakfast, which was just what he would have expected. You kicked your boots off in the back porch, drew a big breath of crisp air (the tops of the hills were streaked with the first light snow), walked in your socks into the warm, cooking-smelling kitchen, and there would be Granny stirring the porridge. Always.

And so she was that morning—only there was something wrong about her stance, about the position of her right arm. Silent in his socks Davy stole across and saw that she was having trouble holding the spoon; she was clutching it with a curious, awkward grasp, with her fourth and fifth fingers inside the handle.

“I'll do that,” he said.

“It is my work,” she answered, but she didn't resist when he took the spoon from her.

“Have you hurt your hand?” he asked.

She sat down in Dadda's chair, which was something he'd never seen her do before. Even Rud, stretched beneath the table, gave a little puzzled growl.

“I had a fall in the yard, a month ago,” she said.

“Did you trip?”

“No, I did not, nor slip. I was walking from the shed with some potatoes in my apron, and it was a dry morning, and then I woke up on the parlor sofa where Dadda and Ian had carried me. Oh, but I was bruised. I lay in bed four days—me!—the doctor tried to keep me there a week, but I would not heed him. The bruises have gone, and the stiffness, but these two fingers, look, I cannot move them. A great hindrance it is.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“Oh, I am becoming old, so I must be careful. Do not talk to Dadda about this, Davy, for it frets him. He is saying we must sell the farm and go to live in a little bungalow in Llangollen—and that would kill him. Stir that pot now, before it burns.”

Davy was glad to do so. In the flurry and mess of their lives in England the farm had seemed fixed and certain, a point of rest—not just because it was a solid house that had stood through the centuries, but because of the people who lived in it, Granny and Dadda, acting and speaking for a life that was rooted and continuing, like a great sycamore. Now it was as though Davy had knocked on the trunk and heard it boom hollow.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“Ach, don't you fret either. I have many good years in me yet.”

Davy decided that the porridge was hot enough so he drew it off the hot plate and moved the kettle across.

“Gran,” he said suddenly, “may I talk to you about Dad?”

“You may try,” she said dryly.

“You remember about the gift I've got?” he said.

“Do not trust it, Davy. You cannot trust it.”

“Yes, I know. I try not to let it even happen, especially when I'm with the family. I let on to Penny last holidays, but that was by mistake. But Dad … he's always thinking about you, especially when he's tired and unhappy.”

“Do not trust it, Davy. Do not say one word, do one deed, because of what your gift shows you. It has been no friend to your family.”

“I know—but I don't think it's quite like that. It's dangerous because you can't help believing it's told you more than it really has. It makes you think that you know what other people are really like inside, but you don't. Penny understands people much better than I do. Shall I tell you what she says about Dad?”

“When is that girl going to get out of bed?”

“Half past eleven, probably. It's the first day of the hols.”

“Worse than that Ian, isn't she? Help yourself then, and put the pot in the bottom of the oven.”

Very carefully Davy spooned golden granules of sugar over the gray mess in his bowl to make an even, exact layer. He watched the cream, poured in at the edge, seeping through the gold. This childhood ritual still gave him inexplicable pleasure. Maliciously Granny waited until his mouth was full.

“Well, what does the girl say of him?” she snapped.

“Oh,” spluttered Davy, swallowing so fast that he burned his throat, “well, I don't know if you know, but Dad's always getting into difficulties and scrapes. We've lived in dozens of houses and apartments, and three times in trailers, because he kept losing his jobs, usually for something … well, not nicking money out of the till, or anything like that … not quite … sometimes for making a mess of things … but he's good at some jobs—anything to do with people—and then it's been for something absolutely stupid. Oh, he'd settle in and Mum would find us a house and a school, and in a couple of months Dad would come home and say he'd been promoted and everything seemed to be going fine, and then … well, once he borrowed his boss's Rover without asking and drove it into a brick wall … things like that. And look, this last time we all thought everything was okay. We'd been at Spenser Mills for nearly a year and it felt as though we were going to stay there for good, and then Dad got himself stuck in something really stupid, far worse than ever before. I found out and Penny bullied him into putting things straight before it was too late. Well, because of that Penny and I talked about him a lot, and she says that when things start going okay, he destroys them on purpose—subconscious on purpose, I mean—because that's not what he
really
wants. He wants to be here, at the farm, and if he can't have that, he doesn't want anything. Do you see what I mean?”

“It was his choice. With his eyes open, too, he made it.”

“But he isn't like that. I don't think anyone is, really. You never do anything just for one reason, and some of your reasons are open-eye ones, and some of them are too dark to see.”

“Well?”

“Oh … I suppose what I wanted to say was couldn't you ask him and Mum to come and stay? If he could come here when he wanted, then he might stop always smashing things up, and …”

“It was his choice. It is still his choice.”

“But it affects us all! Couldn't you just ask him?”

“It is for him to ask. He must ask my pardon.”

Davy could think of nothing useful to say, so he ate porridge.

“It is not right that you should judge me,” said Granny in a metallic voice. “You do not know what happened … ach, Davy, it is so long ago. Perhaps I will tell you, and then you will stop judging me. Well, it is to do with your gift still. Your father is not Dadda's son, you know—he is the son of my Davy. He was born seven months after the explosion at the quarry, and before then the story was all up and down the valley—not the true story, you see, but bits and pieces that came to much the same thing. Think what it was like, Davy, to go to the Chapel all in black for your dead man and big with his child in you, and to be preached at there for your wickedness. Ach, it is long ago. Dadda was a good man, and he was lead tenor in the choir, too. I think the Deacons valued him more for his singing than his goodness—but all the same, after that sermon he spoke to them and the Minister, spoke to them strongly; but they shut their minds and ears to him, so … well, after the explosion I had gone back to my own home, though my own mother would not speak to me, and Dadda came down there in his Sunday coat and asked me to be his wife and live at this farm again. I told him, of course, what Davy had seen with his gift, but … ach, Dadda is a beautiful soul. I will not tell you what he said.

“So your father was born in this house and grew up as our son, laughing about the fields like my own Davy. I was careful of him—watchful—too much, perhaps. It is difficult when you have only the one. There was an impatience in him, yes, he took that from me … and then he was clever at school—not scholarship clever but good enough for us to think of sending him to college, which we would have had to pay for then—not like now, it wasn't, with Ian getting his education for nothing and yet so ungrateful—but your father wanted to leave school as soon as he was allowed. He wanted to be a man, but we made him stay on, fretting to be away … not sulking, mind you, that was not his nature … ach, so many friends he had, there was never a boy like it. Often it was like living in one of your towns. He seemed to whistle them out of the bare hills to loiter around our door, leaning on their bicycles. Or he'd be off with them all Saturday down the town.

“Now I should have told you that we'd explained to him about the gift, telling it like it was a fairy story and not true at all. And when he was eight or nine, he would pretend that he possessed it, for a game, though he did not. And then he forgot it. But now he and these other boys wanted a bit of money for one of their schemes, so they got up an entertainment in a youth hall down the town, singing and jokes, you know? And what does he do for his part? A mind-reading performance. To this day I do not know how he arranged it, but it was with a friend and they invented hidden signals, so the friend could walk among the audience and they gave him watches or letters or photographs, while your father stood blindfolded on the stage and told them what his friend held in his hand. No harm in that, was there?”

Davy shook his head, though he knew Dad and could half guess what kind of thing was coming. Granny's voice had dropped to a soft rustle of syllables while she looked down at her right hand with its last two fingers bent inwards like the claws of a bird.

“It was Mrs. Thomas from Llyndaes, never a friend of mine, walked up special to tell me. Tuesday morning it was, so I was baking and answered the door with flour to my elbows. My own son, she said, to make his silly little performance more amusing, had told all those people about the gift, and had told them also about me and my Davy and Huw. He pretended, of course, that it was a story about his great-granny, but there was enough of them to remember the explosion and to inform the others. Ach, I thanked Mrs. Thomas and went back to my kitchen and finished my bread, and I remember thinking that it could never rise, not after news of that kind—but it rose, just as though nothing had happened. And angry I was, so that I could hardly explain to Dadda—but he coaxed it out of me, and then he coaxed me into forgiving the boy. Which I tried to, for Dadda's sake, but … but the way he answered. I had to say
something
to him, didn't I? I could not have let it lie, just like that. Oh, what he said to me, and what he said to Dadda when he came in from milking! How I'd killed two men and how I'd sucked the will out of a third and how I was trying to do the same to him, and how Dadda was a drudge and a coward to let me treat him so, and … ach, such stupid words to remember all these years …