In a Good Light (20 page)

Christian rolled his eyes. ‘This is a wilderness trip, not the Women's Institute,' he said.

Mum had the decency to laugh at herself, and slung the half-demolished trolley back in the cupboard.

‘Go on, then, Mr Wilderness,' she said. ‘Enjoy your blisters.'

He shouldered his pack, and set off, whistling ostentatiously. I ran up to the attic to watch his progress along the lane. Before he had even reached the corner he had taken out my bar of emergency chocolate and disposed of it in three big bites.

The week passed miserably without him. the house seemed too large, too quiet and too empty. I missed the sound of his homecoming each day, the clatter of his bike on the gravel, the slam of the door and the crash of his schoolbag on the hall floor. Watching TV wasn't nearly so much fun without him sprawled on a cushion in the middle of the carpet, laughing like a witch. Although he hadn't had so much time lately for pontoon and chess, with the rugby and the jogging, and the homework, it was his big, comforting presence that I was used to, and my own company was a poor substitute.

Grandpa Percy tried to fill the void by teaching me every two-handed card game in the canon, and Mum and Dad showered me with extra attention and kindness, but they, too, were finding Christian's absence strange. The weather had turned suddenly wet and cold, and we listened anxiously to the forecast for North Wales every evening.

One afternoon Dad went up into one of the lofts and came down with a wooden box containing some crumpled tubes of oil paint and balding brushes. Some of the colours were fossilised beyond redemption, but we managed to squeeze out a few threads of chrome yellow, white, ochre and ultramarine, and I produced what I considered a very passable still life, entitled Milk Jug, Egg and Banana.

I took it into school to show my art teacher, Mr Hatch, and he was very complimentary, and even gave me some hints on composition, suggesting, for example, that next time I didn't need to arrange the objects in a straight line, and could possibly put them on something, rather than have them floating in space.

Dad wanted to frame it, but once Mr Hatch had hinted at its flaws, I didn't feel it deserved to be displayed. I kept it anyway, as it represented a milestone: the beginning of a stormy relationship with oils.

On the day marked out for Christian's return, I decided to go and meet him at the station. It was a fair ride away, and I wasn't sure quite when in the afternoon to expect him, but I had nothing else to do, so I set off after lunch, taking a small sketch pad and pencil to help while away the time. My art teacher, in addition to his other advice, had recommended I carry these with me when I was out and about, and get into the habit of ‘Sketching from Life'.

I chained my bike to the railings in the car park, found myself a seat at the end of the platform which commanded a view of trains arriving from London, opened my sketch pad, and began, rather self-consciously, to draw. My eyepatch seemed to be something of an asset in this endeavour, removing the troubling three-dimensional element from the matter of composition. Viewed through one eye the world already looked as flat as a picture. However, I was unprepared for the annoying reluctance of Life to keep still while I was drawing it, and several of my sketches had to be abandoned incomplete as the subjects wandered off to catch a train. After a while I began to appreciate the importance of speed in capturing the unposed human form, and to hanker for the relative compliance of my milk jug, egg and banana.

I eventually settled on a teenage girl who was sitting nice and still on a bench further down the platform. She was at too great a distance to suspect me of watching her, and was in any case engrossed in a book, which gave me hope that she might not be intending to move for a while. Her blonde hair hung forward over her face, which saved me the bother of tackling her profile. I had more or less caught her outline, and was about to put in some light and shade, when she stood up to examine the timetable board. A moment later she sat back down in a fresh position, angled away from me, at which point I gave up.

Half an hour passed. My pencil was blunt, my bottom numb, and I had produced a dozen unfinished scribbles of my surroundings, and one detailed drawing of my own foot, clad in semi-perished plimsoll. I was growing tired of shielding my work from the stares of nosey parkers so I went in search of a bin to deposit some pencil shavings, and immediately lost my seat. I don't know whether it was the cold wind, or my great industry, but I suddenly had a fierce craving for sugar and spent some time debating whether to go to the kiosk or risk my money in the machine on the platform, for the additional gambler's buzz, and the pleasure of pressing buttons. The gamble won of course. I could almost feel the hot breath of parental disapproval on the back of my neck as I posted the coins in the slot. Mum had always held vending machines to be instruments of Satan, and would sooner starve than use one, with the result that they now held a strange and terrible fascination for me. My feeling of guilt turned to dismay and rage as the dispensing drawer refused to yield to gentle and then urgent tugs. I could see my bar of Whole Nut, the nearside half-inch of it at least, trapped in the bottom of the tray.

I was so engrossed in this futile struggle with the machine that I wasn't even aware of the arrival of a London train until the sound of slamming doors brought me to my senses. Beyond the other twenty or so passengers who had alighted, I caught sight of Christian at the far end of the platform, straining to lash himself back under his rucksack. I put my hand up in greeting and he gave a great, wild grin and waved back, but there was something not quite right about it. As I approached I realised what it was: the wave and the smile were not for me, but for someone ahead of me, to my right.

When comprehension finally comes to the chronically deluded it lands like a sledgehammer, and for a moment or two I stood reeling, as the blonde girl, whose likeness I had been attempting to capture with my pencil only minutes before, walked up to Christian and put her arms round his neck. I saw him stoop to kiss her, and then I shrank back behind the pillar where I had just been tussling with the chocolate machine, so that they wouldn't see me as they passed, hand in hand. I needn't have bothered, as they were entirely preoccupied with each other, but the desire to hide was instinctive.

I suppose it was disappointment at finding myself superfluous that caused a few tears to pool up behind my eyepatch, but it was a feeling more like grief that curdled in my blood as I watched them turn into the booking hall and vanish from sight. I aimed a final punch at the tin belly of the chocolate machine, and then trudged back to retrieve my bike for the long ride home, with the defeated attitude of someone twice robbed.

‘
CHRISTIAN'S GOT A
girlfriend,' I announced over dinner a few days later. I hadn't intended to say anything about it, but in spite of my broad hints in private, Christian had shown no signs of wanting to confide. There was nothing for it but to force his hand.

‘Have you, Christian?' Mum enquired serenely. ‘Is she nice?'

Christian shot me a look of pure hatred before saying, ‘Yes', in a clipped tone that suggested further questions would not be welcome.

‘Well, that's nice,' said Mum, fishing for seconds in the casserole.

‘There was one of those urban foxes in the garden again today,' said Grandpa Percy, whose contributions to conversation tended not to relate to the prevailing topic. ‘Skinny, emancipated creature,' he added with disgust.

‘Are we allowed to know her name?' Mum asked,
dredging a ladleful of chicken bones from the pot and depositing them on Dad's plate with a clatter.

‘Penny,' said Christian.

‘He pretends to go jogging, but he's actually meeting her,' I explained. I'd burnt my boats as far as popularity went, so I thought I may as well make what I could of my hard-won knowledge. ‘She's got blonde hair.'

‘How do you know so much?' Christian demanded. ‘Have you been following me?'

‘No,' I replied, truthfully.

‘I could probably have got a shot at him if I had an airgun,' said Grandpa Percy.

‘I'm sure Christian would have told us about her if he'd wanted us to know,' Dad said to me with a frown, and it was so unlike him to offer me even the mildest rebuke that I felt myself shrivel.

Far from bringing Christian to order, my declaration had the opposite effect: legitimising his many absences from home. Instead of resorting to his former subterfuge and disguise to engineer his meetings, he now abandoned all pretence of jogging and sauntered out of the house each evening, smartly dressed, in a miasma of acrid antiperspirant. Penny lived in one of the houses at the very furthest extent of his paper round. They had met months ago in the driveway during a territorial dispute between Christian and her dachshund. This much information I had managed to wring from him.

‘He's never here,' I complained to Mum. ‘Doesn't he like us any more?'

Mum smiled indulgently. ‘Of course he does.' The fact that nobody but me seemed to mind was just another provocation. ‘You'll be exactly the same when you're sixteen.'

Yes, but what am I supposed to do with myself till then? I wanted to shout. It was so miserable being the younger of two: always the disciple, the bumbling apprentice, perpetually outstripped and outperformed.

Even when Christian was at home he was good for nothing. He was either busy with schoolwork, or lying in a daze on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Occasionally I would hear the thud of darts hitting their target, but by the time I'd made it up the stairs to challenge him to a game he'd have grown bored and fallen to mooching again. He had recently acquired a guitar on loan from Turton's music cupboard, and was trying to teach himself to play from a book.
A Tune a Day
, it was called, with fabulous optimism. Christian had been practising for many days and produced nothing more than a horrible discordant thrumming. No sooner did he reach a standard sufficient to pick out a recognisable tune –
Blackbird
, say, or
The House of the Rising Sun
– he would spoil it all by trying to sing along. Such was his distraction during this period that I managed to pull off my first and only victory at chess. He hadn't wanted to play, but I had nagged and nagged, and he put in at best only fifty per cent concentration, but still, it proved how deep the sickness had gone. He caught on to what I was doing just too late to rally. Before I could even say the words Check Mate, he had dragged one of the couch cushions down on top of me and sat on my head. I felt happier than I'd done for ages.

I didn't see it at the time, of course, but this was the beginning of Christian's gradual detachment from childhood. His boredom and irritation with home were just natural stages in his preparation to leave it behind and join the adult world, Mum explained. I wasn't to take it personally. Slowly, inexorably he was starting to cut the threads, so
that he would be ready, one day soon, to move on, out, away. I found this idea hard to bear. To me the Old Schoolhouse was still a sufficient world, and the only threat was change. Whenever I thought about our family it was always the same scene that came to mind: the four of us playing table-tennis in the garden on Dad's knocked-together table made of trestles and two sheets of blistered plywood. The odd thing was we'd probably only played together three or four times in my life, and yet this is what I saw when I closed my eyes and imagined that entity: The Fairchilds.

‘I don't want to grow up if it makes me all moody like Christian,' I said. ‘I'm going to stay young for ever. Even when I'm old I'll still like doing all the things I like now.'

Mum smiled. ‘You sound like Aunty Barbara,' she said. ‘She could never bear the idea of getting older.'

This use of the past tense made me suspicious. ‘Is she dead?' I asked. It was three years since we'd seen her, carried off in an ambulance. There had been nothing since, not even a belated birthday card or a plea for help.

‘Oh, no, she's still alive as far as I know.'

‘Why don't we ever see Donovan any more? I liked him.'

Mum grew evasive. ‘It's such a difficult set-up. We've rather lost touch.'

‘But why?' I persisted. ‘He used to come and stay for ages.'

‘I did try to keep in contact, but . . . it's a funny thing about human nature. If you've helped someone when they're at their lowest, they don't want to be reminded.'

‘You'd think they'd be grateful,' I said.

‘You would,' said Mum. ‘But sometimes it's more complicated than that. Barbara was very ill when she was with us, and needed to go to hospital. But she was too ill to realise
she needed to go. So we had to make her go. She probably still resents that.'

‘Perhaps it's better not to help people,' I decided.

‘No, that's no good either. You have to help people, but don't expect any thanks.'

I never did get to meet this Penny. Christian didn't show the slightest inclination to bring her home, and Mum alluded to it only once. He replied with a cryptic laugh: his usual non-committal response to unwelcome suggestions, and the subject was dropped. Sometimes I couldn't help regretting Mum and Dad's policy of tact and tolerance. There were occasions when I felt some robust interference would have served.

Before I had a chance to accustom myself to this phantom presence it was all over: they had split up and Christian was back amongst us, for a while at least. I didn't allow myself to be too hopeful: there would be other Pennys, who would be able to tempt him away from us, with whatever mysterious attractions we lacked.

THE DAY MY
eyepatch came off, the world rose up to meet me. Houses and trees sprang to attention like the pages of a pop-up book; the sharpness and solidity of things amazed me and I started to draw again, inspired by this new insight. ‘It's the artist's gift to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar,' Mr Hatch said, and I saw at last what he meant. He had been prompted to this remark by the sketch of my plimsoll. It looked, he said, like something organic – a species of cabbage, perhaps – and he put it up, properly mounted, on the wall outside the head's office, where all the best pictures went.