The Kind Folk (30 page)

They're in a side street of Woolton, one of the outlying villages of Liverpool. The couple of main streets don't concede too much to progress; tea shops nestle among the bistros and elegant hairdressing salons, and the village cinema stops the film halfway through for tea and cakes. The light of the late June evening gleams on the gate at the end of the path between virtually identical flowerbeds. The wrought-iron image that's central to the gate is borrowing the light in the manner of the moon it represents. One reason the Arnolds made a present of the gate is how fond little Maurice was of it, conveying this before he could even speak. As Luke shuts the front door the boy points at the gate. "That's my story."

"What is, Maurice?"

"They're the hands that made the moon and now they're giving it to us. Maybe it's a song as well."

"I expect your mother would like that," Luke says and feels as if his unease has made him too guarded. "I hope you know we're both proud of you."

"I am of you too."

Or did he say two? Perhaps he meant both; he already knows a good few tricks with language. "We ought to be of mummy, that's for sure," Luke says and heads for the car.

Without her success they wouldn't be able to afford a number of things, not least the double garage. As the boy walks towards it the door rises like a lid somebody is opening from within, but only because he's using Luke's key fob. At least his delight in devices of the kind is childlike. He hands his father the keys once he has wakened the Lexus with the fob, and Luke drives out of the garage. As the door sinks into place he says "Where would you like to go?"

"Shall we go into the country and see what's there?"

"Not too far this late. We don't want to be doing anything we can't tell your mother, do we?" When the boy looks as disappointed as children of his age often do, Luke says "Let's see what we can find that's close. You tell me where you want to stop."

Open countryside is less than half an hour away. Luke wonders if the boy will stay quiet until they reach it, but they're on a road close to the limit of the city when Maurice starts to hum a tune. At first Luke thinks his son is parodying Ambrose again, until he hears how strange the plaintive melody is, not like any he can recall ever having heard. "Is that your song?" he has to ask.

"It's one of them. Can't you see it?"

Luke is trying to imagine what sense Maurice thinks they share—he's afraid to wonder how much it reveals about his son—when the boy points ahead with the fingers of one hand. At least they aren't spread wide, let alone inhumanly wide, and Luke sees Maurice is remembering that Sophie's mother told him it was rude to point. Luke thinks this is true only if you're pointing at someone, implying you're other than them. The boy is indicating a line of telegraph poles, and not too belatedly Luke identifies what he has in mind: the dozens of birds perched on the five wires like notes on a stave. "I can't read music," he admits. "You're the one who's going to be in the choir."

He would happily believe this means the boy takes after his mother more than after Luke, but could it simply demonstrate how good Maurice is at copying her? Luke feels as if tendrils of music are twining into his brain, seeking to revive experiences he can no longer recollect. On the whole he's glad when the avian notation is out of sight and Maurice falls silent, though not before rounding off the wordless song with a phrase that seems somehow to complete it. They pass through a village where only the church spire is over two storeys high, and then just a railway viaduct separates them from an unpeopled landscape.

The viaduct can't help reminding Luke of Terence, though the arches are considerably taller than the one above the Runcorn house. The arch through which the road leads resembles a portal to a different world.

Above fields and clumps of trees the sky has clouded over, suffocating the low sun. As Luke drives through the arch the sun finds a ragged slit in the clouds, and a beam of light wider than the road illuminates a treetop before gliding across a field towards the car. It hasn't reached the roadside when it's engulfed by the clouds. "Shall we go there?" Maurice says, pointing at the field.

"Any reason in particular?"

"Dad." This sounds as impatient as any six-year-old can be with a parent. "Didn't you see?" the boy protests. "It's where we're meant to go."

This too could be a child's idea. Luke drives onto the verge beside the field and lets Maurice out of the car. An ageing stile stands at the nearest corner of the hedge. The rungs look chewed, and they wobble in their sockets as Luke climbs after his son. The boy halts on the thick lush uncultivated grass to wait for him. "Which way now?" Luke finds he's anxious to establish.

"Let's walk to the light." As Luke blinks at the mass of cloud that forms a backdrop to the trees, Maurice says "A bit of it's still there."

Is Luke seeing what he means? The wide swathe of grass that the beam of sunlight traced appears to have retained a silvery glimmer. The faint luminosity puts Luke in mind of the kind of gleam the blades of grass might borrow from the moon. It must be an effect of the evening light—of the secretive glow that seems to be advancing through the trees on the far side of the field. When he steps forward the glint vanishes from the field, and he refrains from asking Maurice if he can still see it. They're about halfway to the trees when the boy lays a hand on his arm and murmurs "Dad."

Luke glances at the hand to be reassured that the fingers aren't excessively wide. "What is it?"

"Look, they're coming to us."

Luke follows his gaze to the trees. A magpie has soared down to the grass, and it isn't the only creature on that side of the field. A squirrel is scurrying down a tree trunk—yes, just a squirrel. As it darts onto the field it startles a rabbit, which stands up on its hind legs next to the squirrel. A mass of blackness clatters out of a treetop, and a crow sails down beside the rabbit. "What are they going to do?" Maurice whispers.

He reminds Luke of a child asking for a show to be put on for him. Luke hasn't thought of a response by the time he grasps that none may have been expected of him. The magpie nods its head and claps its wings, and then the crow does. The squirrel darts forward between the birds, and the rabbit follows suit. Four pairs of black eyes gleam across the field at Maurice and his father. "It's like a story, isn't it?" Maurice says. "One of the fairy tales Grandma Drew read me when I was little."

Perhaps he means how the creatures are arranged in a line with equal spaces between them. Surely he couldn't anticipate how they start to behave, ducking out of sight one after the other and then reappearing in order from the grass. Then the crow twirls slowly all the way around three times, and its companions take it in turn to perform the action. It seems to enliven or even to delight them, because the crow and the magpie soar up in unison before resuming their positions, and then the squirrel and the rabbit leap considerably higher than Luke has ever seen such creatures jump. Or perhaps he did once before, and he's starting to remember when Maurice says "That's how I feel."

He could mean it's how the spectacle affects him. Perhaps he even thinks he does, but Luke knows better. He doesn't need the boy to ask "Have you ever seen anything like that, dad?"

Luke takes a breath he might use to keep his words in, but he has the impression that his son already senses the answer. "When I was your age I did."

At last he understands Terence's words, both in the journal and the ones he said to Luke.
GRACES FIELD
—not, Luke thinks, the one he and Maurice are in, but then it could have been anywhere in the world—
LUKE SHOWED ANIMALS
. He had thought Terence meant he'd shown them to Luke, but it was the other way around and more than that. "See what you did," Terence said as the animals ran away, but he wasn't saying Luke had scared them off. He meant that Luke had caused them to enact a little of his secret power without even knowing he had.

Luke doesn't know whether his son is aware of producing the spectacle, and he can't ask. Will he ever have to help Maurice confront his own nature? If Luke was capable of living most of his life without having to acknowledge what he was, surely Maurice needn't be forced to know. At least Luke doesn't think the Folk are anywhere near, unless he was robbed on Hafan Lanwisel of the ability to sense them. Just now he can't help feeling wistfully relieved that there's still magic in the world. Perhaps that's a last trace of his nature if not a feeble revival of it. He knows how Terence felt about his secret; he feels very much like that now—he could imagine that, having imitated Terence, he's turning into him. He holds his son's hand as they watch the dance of the creatures of the field and woods grow more elaborate and mysterious while the night settles over the countryside. At last the creatures withdraw into the dark. The field is quiet beneath a rising incomplete moon, which follows Luke and his son all the way home.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Jenny read it first, as always—not this version but the unedited work in progress. I needed her encouragement, believe me. John Llewellyn Probert advised on a usage. Gert Jan Bekenkamp kept me supplied with several sorts of culture, and Keith Ravenscroft did with horror films even I had hardly heard of.

The book was written and rewritten mostly here at my desk, but it did spend a few days at the delightful Hotel Da Bruno near the Rialto Bridge in Venice.