The Kind Folk (6 page)

A woman has emerged from a doorway in the wall. She's at least a head shorter than Luke, but her size appears to have concentrated her fierceness, tugging her small face into sharper relief. A dusty wind flaps her faded black dress like a crow's wings and tousles her greying hair. "What do you see?" Luke retorts.

"Someone pretending, it looks like."

He feels altogether too exposed. Is she another viewer of the Brittan show? "What do you mean?" he blurts.

"Pretending you've got business round here."

'Just looking. No harm in that, surely."

"You look a bit too interested in other people's cars."

"Well, I'm not. There's mine."

When he uses his key to make the Lexus yip and blink she continues staring narrowly at him. He's beginning to feel he has forgotten how to portray an ordinary person by the time she says "Maybe you're the other kind we get round here."

"You'd have to tell me what that is."

"If they're not buying they're selling."

Once her stare makes her meaning clear Luke says "I've got nothing to do with drugs at all."

"You knew what I was talking about, though, didn't you?" Rather less than immediately she says "What are you after, then?"

"I was looking for Amberley Street."

Her stare doesn't relent, but it changes in some way Luke isn't sure of. "What do you want there?" she demands.

"My uncle—" Luke may not feel entitled to say that any more, but to alter it seems disloyal. "He knocked down a house there," he says.

"What one?"

"I think it was owned by somebody called Strong. Apparently the cellar collapsed while someone was in it, and then the house had to be demolished."

He hasn't finished speaking when her gaze softens at last. "God bless him," she says. "Tell him that if you see him."

"I wish I could." In some haste Luke adds "Why?"

"The man who had that house was messing with things nobody should. John Strong, they called him or he called himself. Don't ask me what he did, but worse than drugs." With something like defiance she says "There were always people going in like they couldn't stop themselves. Tell me why he'd live anywhere like that if he could do that to people."

Luke isn't even sure what he is being asked. "Can you say where it was?"

"Across there." She raises a hand in the direction of the car park, so briefly and violently that she might be trying to fend off whatever it signifies. As soon as Luke thanks her she retreats through the doorway, and he can't be certain that he hears her mutter "Maybe it needed more than knocking down."

It seems even more pointless for Luke to abandon the search than it does to continue. He advances through the gateway and is halfway across the waste ground when he hears rats squealing in a heap of rubbish beside the path. No, chunks of polystyrene white as headstones are chafing together in a parched breeze that rouses random clumps of grass and weeds to twitch like insect limbs. As the noise subsides and the vegetation reverts to lying low he makes for the end of the path.

This side of the waste ground is overlooked by a block of student flats, juvenile with bright red bricks and relieved only by four storeys of niggardly windows. Opposite the block on Falkner Terrace a row of Georgian houses is fungoid with satellite dishes. Two tiers of indifferent faces spy on Luke from a passing bus. He's alone on the pavement, and the sound of the bus recedes to isolate his footsteps. He tramps past the flats and turns the corner, and lets out a lingering breath.

He's in Amberley Street, all that's left of it—a strip of roadway flanked by pavements, ending at the fence on this side of the car park. It's identifiable by a street sign attached to the railings of a basketball court and covered with graffiti. Opposite the court the multicoloured railings around a windowless brick bungalow show it to be a Caribbean centre. Otherwise the lopped-off road seems to have nothing to offer except the view of parked cars, beyond which a slender pointed spire appears to be fixing a stray cloud. Luke is back on the path across the waste ground when he falters, remembering what Dan said after the funeral.

"Looked like he thought he was some god in a museum"—that was how Dan described the face on the stone Terence took home. Luke wasn't sure what Dan had in mind, but he knows all too precisely now. High domed forehead without wrinkles, deep staring eyes with no eyebrows, long smooth hollow cheeks, blunt elongated nose, thin lips not quite keeping their amusement to themselves—if he looks behind him he will see that face. He marches a few paces and then, although he's enraged by doing so, swings around. The path and everywhere around it are deserted.

How could he have imagined a face in such detail? He feels as if he's leaving it behind rather than simply putting it out of his head. The Lexus blinks awake, and he's annoyed by a sense of taking refuge. As he starts the car he resists an impulse to glance across the waste ground. At last he does, to see no more than he already saw. The car jerks forward and he drives away, eager to outdistance the impression that made him look towards the student flats: that he was being watched from the dozens of windows—that every window would be occupied by the same pale elongated face.

GOING BACK

"Come in, Luke," Maurice shouts and flings the door wide. "Come in, son."

His lower lip droops as though it's miming openness, and Luke restrains his own from reflecting the expression. "Seeing you twice in a week now, are we? Not often enough," Maurice declares. "What are you having to drink?"

"I'd better not, thanks. I was on the way to the house."

"Your house, you mean," Maurice says more enthusiastically still. "Yours and Sophie's and somebody else's as well."

It's clear that he has been celebrating, and Luke guesses Terence's will is why. As well as leaving Luke the house in Runcorn it confirms that Maurice and Freda have been left the demolition firm. Before Luke can say any more Maurice strides along the broad timbered hall. "It's Luke, Freddy," he shouts.

Freda bustles out of the metal and marble kitchen. She's wearing an apron like an elongated humbug, which emits a plastic crackle as she hugs Luke. "Won't you stay for dinner? We're having the pasta you like."

"You'll be coming back this way, won't you?" Maurice says. "Better go before it's dark."

"Why are you telling him that, Maurice?"

"The boys were saying Terry had been letting his bills sit for months. Maybe the power's been cut off by now."

"He must have had something on his mind." Freda shakes her head as if to jettison the thought and says "I can always add to the pasta, Luke. I don't like to think of you sitting on your own at home."

"Sophie wants to keep touring as long as she can before she has to come off the road."

"I wasn't criticising her. It's who she is just like your career is you. We ought to admire her driving all the way to Devon in her state." Freda hesitates and says "You won't mind if we pray for her, will you? We did for you."

Luke assumes she means when they were trying for a child. "I'm sure we won't," he tells her and Maurice.

"We heard her single on the radio today. The presenter said they'll be queuing when it's in the shops." As if this is related Freda says "So have we managed to tempt you with dinner?"

By now they've all strayed into the lounge. Beyond the conservatory framed by floor-length windows the sky is darkening above the river. Luke imagines lifting the stale pillow on Terence's empty bed to see whether it conceals a face in the gloom. "Maybe I'll let the house rest for today," he says.

"Get it done before he changes his mind." With equal urgency Maurice tells Luke "Now you're going to have that drink with me."

'Just a glass of white, then." Luke sits by an antique table under which three members of its family crouch increasingly low and small, and the vintage sofa gives a discreet upholstered creak. "A small one," he requests despite knowing Maurice doesn't go in for those.

Maurice watches and then listens to Freda heading for the kitchen. As he steps behind the mahogany bar that five-year-old Luke helped him build by holding tools, he clears his throat. Rather less loudly he says "Have you been looking for your folk at all?"

"My..." Having gathered why Maurice is keeping his voice down, Luke says "I wouldn't know where to start."

"Maybe they'll come looking now we've been on the box."

"Why, do you want to find out who you might have had?"

Maurice all but fills a relatively diminutive glass with Chardonnay and takes tiny steps with it towards Luke. Once he has planted the glass on the table that squats protectively over its brood he says "I was thinking of you, Luke."

"I didn't mean you wanted them instead." As Maurice's lip droops to meet his whisky glass Luke says "Whoever I should have been, I can't help wondering what kind of life they've had."

"You're who you should have been and don't go thinking different."

Luke suspects that some of the fierceness is intended to prevent Maurice from reflecting on his real son's fate. Maurice takes a gulp of whisky and sits forward to mutter "No need to tell Freddy what we've been talking about, all right? If you ever turn anything up, let me know. I ought to be the one that tells her."

He seems both eager and reluctant to learn the truth, which leaves Luke still more uncertain which he is himself. "I won't," he says and is taking more than a sip from his glass when Freda reappears, having hung up her apron to reveal a black and silver dress that might have borrowed its colours from her hair. "Are there two hungry boys in here?" she cries. "Bring your drinks through."

Luke follows her into the dining-room, where a chandelier poises crystal icicles above the elongated oval table draped with lace, and Maurice tramps at his heels, scragging a bottle of wine in either hand. Freda serves salad and then a Bolognese somewhat suffocated by extra pasta. "Tasty," Maurice says as usual, and Luke declares "It is." Freda dabs her lips after a minuscule drink of wine and says "Are we taking you back, Luke?"

"I hope I've never really been away."

She laughs as if he has made a joke instead of failing to grasp her question. "I was just remembering all our family dinners together."

"So do I."

"Go on then," Maurice says. "Remember some."

"Your mother would pass round all the photos they'd taken that year every Christmas, and your father wouldn't let her pass the next one till he told us all the details. You said by the time they'd shown us Istanbul we could have walked through it ourselves."

"Well, I'd forgotten that. You don't miss much."

"Grandmother Laing used to hold her food up to the light with her fork till you told her not to set me an example, Freda. And Grandfather Laing tried to convince me she was a scientist instead of being fussy what she ate."

"He did." Freda wags her head as if she's shaking more of a reminiscent smile onto her face. "What else are you going to bring back to us?"

"Your Aunt Beatrice thought children never ought to eat nuts or they'd choke. She'd even go through all the chocolates at Christmas to make sure I didn't get one with a nut in. She always used to tell me I wasn't a squirrel."

"You aren't a squirrel, Luke." He can hear the hearty voice addressing him in the manner adults often use on children, as if they're sharing a joke with a larger audience. Perhaps he concluded that was how you were supposed to behave, entertaining everyone in the room. He's tempted to reproduce the voice, except this might be more like a seance than a reminiscence. Instead he says "And Uncle Don used to eat anything he dropped on his chair at dinner, and not just that day either."

"We had to see nobody else sat there, didn't we, Maurice? And we hid the chair when he wasn't here and got a new one after he left us."

"You only let him carry on like that because he made out he was deaf. She'd never let us get away with it, would she, Luke?" Maurice says and gazes at him. "But by God, you had a sharp eye even at that age. You weren't three when he snuffed it. Here's hoping you didn't see things about us we'd rather forget."

"Not a solitary one," Luke says and does his best to back it up with memories—Spanish holidays that felt sunlit even after dark, cycling with Freda and Maurice by the river all the way to Liverpool and back, the few days it took them to teach him to drive (Freda applauded everything he did, Maurice grunted encouragement as Luke imitated all the actions he'd observed), the day they'd delivered Luke and an assortment of possessions to university in an Arnold company van, only to keep being mistaken for a firm doing work on the campus... He feels as if he's claiming memories that should belong to someone else—telling tales on behalf of the person he's portraying. He continues reminiscing until Maurice starts to nod, by which time it's plain that Luke will have to stay the night.

A folded towel lies on the bed, which has doubled since Luke had the room. A facecloth is arranged on top of the plump towel, all their corners precisely lined up. In the bathroom the bottles and jars and sprays are ranked in terms of height along the tiles above the twin sinks; as a child he thought they might be pieces in a game his parents played. Above reflections of the backs of the entire parade, his face in the elongated mirror looks as if it's searching for a sign that it belongs in the house. A new toothbrush is perched on the edge of the left-hand sink, and he uses it once he succeeds in releasing it from its sarcophagus of celluloid and cardboard. He doesn't loiter in the extensive room next door, though it offers a book called
Tiny Tales for the Smallest Room
and a floral scent that seemed to suffuse his childhood. Another volume—
Thoughts for Sleepy 
People
—is provided on the venerable bedside table Luke's room has acquired. Sleepy doesn't sum up how he feels, and he pads barefoot across the springy carpet to the window.

There's no moon. Large soft lumps of dusk stand about the garden, which is boxed in by spiky blackness. The night is silent except for Freda's murmur and then Maurice's in the front bedroom. Beyond the far hedge the river is a thin foreshortened glint, above which the Welsh mountains have been reduced to an ebony frieze the length of the sky, if a shade darker. He remembers standing at the window to see the mountains garlanded with cloud, and a sun that swelled huge and red before wavering like jelly into the earth, and stars that multiplied in the night sky as if his vision were calling them back from the dead. Now he watches while stars appear, beacons that hint at the vast distances they mark. What else can he be waiting for? When he begins to glimpse figures in the hedges, attempting to take a variety of shapes and then reverting to the dark as night winds enliven the foliage, he draws the velvet curtains and retreats to bed.