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Authors: Tim Lebbon

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BOOK: The Thief of Broken Toys
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He stayed there for a few panicked seconds,
angry at Jason — who had once been his friend,
lost now in the same casual way as his wife —
and raging at Elizabeth. When she looked up
and saw him, her expression changed into
something awful. The laughter faded, leaving
behind a painted-on smile, and she seemed to
pause
, growing so motionless that she was his
only focus, and the rest of the world orbited
around her. Then her mouth fell open. Ray did
not hear the name that tumbled out.

Making his way back across the harbour
toward the hillside, he tried to understand
why he felt so angry. He'd known about Jason
and Elizabeth for a couple of months. But this
was the first time he'd seen them together.
And as he climbed the steps and steep paths
toward his house, he came to realize what
troubled him so much. It wasn't Jason's big
hand on her thigh, with all of its implications,
and it wasn't the fact that she appeared so
at ease with another man. It wasn't even his
mumbled comments and her easy laughter.

It was the idea that Elizabeth was moving
on. She had left him alone out in the street,
and after what they had been through, she
could still find it in herself to laugh.

By the time he reached his house, he was
crying. And by the time he'd managed to
unlock the door, fall inside and slam it behind
him, he knew what he had to do.

2

We rise from the sad house with the crying
man and submit to the breeze, now carrying
the growing chill of dusk. The sun is setting
behind the opposite valley ridge, silhouetting
the sparse trees growing up there in defiance
of the storms that sweep this coast. They
throw long shadows out across the valley, and
if the confusion of buildings and water was
not so extreme, they might even be visible
down there. But street lights are flickering on
to kill the shadows, and windows throughout
the village are illuminated from within.

Up to the ridge and along from the village,
and a fox gambols on the slope of bracken and
ferns leading to the sheer cliffs. Several shapes
play around it, but they're too quick and shy
to manifest properly. The wild welcomes the
dusk, as it has since the advent of humanity.
People have taken the day for themselves,
putting limits on it, sectioning it, adjusting it
for their own means and ends. But nighttime,
an absence, still belongs to the land.

Yet there are those who walk the night.
People who tread carefully, but relish the
freedom inherent in the dark winds. Their
minds are often closer to the nature of things,
or the nature
in
things, and they understand
more than most that the wild is a cycle like
everything else. There are the aeons, and the
ages, the years and the seasons, but there is
also day and night, and there lies the truest of
nature's distinctions.

The cliff path is deserted tonight, swept of
fallen leaves by the sea breeze. The hawthorn
trees on either side are mostly leafless now,
and the ferns are fading to brown, readying
to die back and give way to new growth in
several months' time. Some life hibernates
over seasons, and some hides for much shorter
periods.

Below, down through the thick ferns and
gorse, clinging to the edge of the cliff like a
huge barnacle, we see the old stone structure.
Forever, it has been a forgotten remnant of
the village's past. Perhaps a lookout post for
fishermen, or a refuge of some sort. Maybe
it is even a folly, built by a rich villager of
yesteryear to a love that might or might not
have been his. There is little vandalism here.
None of the casual spraypainted exhortations
of youths, or the intentional removal of blocks
to tumble over the cliff, whose sheer edge is
only a few short steps away. It could be that
kids don't know about it, or maybe there are
other reasons. Perhaps animals use it for a
shelter sometimes, but today . . .

There's a spread of things outside the small
building's seaward opening, and from inside . . .
is that a light? Faint, a feeble glow like the
echo of the sun's setting beams that to most
would not even be visible.

And here we are: sitting in the doorway is a
man, where perhaps he wasn't before.

He's an old man. He's smoking a pipe, and
its intermittent glow gives him a lighthouse
face. Something sways in his hand as he
works his fingers. He stretches, and feels the
bones in his shoulder grate together. The first
sign of age. Many other aches and pain have
developed since then, but these are still the
worst. At least his fingers can still flex, and
his hands still grip, and at least his sight is
still sharp.

The shape in his hand is an old beanie doll,
and tonight he will give it a new leg.

He stopped crying before he opened the door,
because he had spilled enough tears in that
room.

Ray had used to read a lot of fiction. But
since Toby had passed away, what reading he
did usually revolved around real life, and was
lighter. Sports commentaries, biographies,
humorous books . . . fiction was inevitably
about conflict and loss, and his life had
suffered enough of those for real. He couldn't
lose himself anymore. His disbelief could no
longer be suspended, because he was always
in the here and now. But when he'd used to
read, one of the things he'd scoffed at was
some people's approach to bereavement.
The
room was exactly the same as the day his wife was
murdered
, a line in a book would say, and Ray
would joke about it to Elizabeth. He'd tell her
that when
she
was murdered he'd clear their
room out straight away, move to the spare
room, and take in a lodger. A pair of Swedish
au pairs, he'd suggested one day, to his wife's
strained laughter. Back then he had demanded
that his fiction be realistic — truth in lies — and
he could not imagine anyone handling loss in
that way. It was the clichéd idea of being stuck
in the moment, and not moving on.

Ray rested his hand on Toby's bedroom
door, readying himself for what he would see.
The room beyond was not as it had been on
the day Toby died. He was not in it, for a start,
motionless and cold in his bed, waiting to be
found by his adoring parents, who couldn't
understand why he was still asleep — they'd
never had to wake him before; he was always
up before them, ready to poke them in the ear
and force them to rise . . .

The bed was stripped now, all the bedding
discarded. Elizabeth had bought a load of new
bedding, but left it on the old mattress in its
packets, never to be made. Later, after she left,
Ray had spread blankets across the mattress
to hide as much as he could, but still had not
made the bed properly. That would be like
waiting for someone else to come.

“Rise and shine, Tobes,” he said, pushing
the door open. The room smelled of dust and
damp — there was a problem with the old
stone walling in one corner, something their
local builder had never been able to solve. The
curtains were permanently open, the view out
onto the dusky garden obscured only by glass
that desperately needed cleaning.

He still came in here sometimes. It wasn't
a shrine or anything; he'd tried many times
to convince himself of that. There were a
couple of boxes of books that he'd packed
away, stacked in one corner and still awaiting
their trip to the charity shop. A pair of folded
curtains were dropped casually on the floor in
one corner. It wasn't a bedroom anymore, but
it was still Toby's room. That was for sure. He
felt his son in here, and as he knelt by the bed,
he experienced a shattering flashback.

The worst memories were those he thought
he'd forgotten.

He and Toby kneel by the bed because his
son has been taught how to pray in school.
Ray's not comfortable with this.
I don't want
him force-fed and brainwashed
, he'd said. But
Elizabeth had calmed his anger.
We were. We
made up our own minds
. So just for that evening
Ray kneels with his son, and smiles when the
boy makes up his own prayers.
Thank God for
Mummy and Daddy, and the sea, and chocolate
ice cream, and the Power Rangers, the film not the
telly program. Thank God for pancakes and Mars
Bars, and crisps, and curry, and
. . . He frowns,
glancing sidelong at Ray to make sure he has
his eyes closed.

Dad!

Sorry, son. Carry on.

Thank God for food and drink, and stuff. Oh,
and for Jesus Christ. Amen
. He glances up at
Ray.
The man in the collar said God knew his son
was going to die. Why did he let that happen?

It's just a story, son. Made up. Like Aesop's
Fables, only not as good
.

Okay. Dad, my Ben 10 watch is broken.

Ray squeezed his lips tight at the memory,
and frowned. Had he ever fixed that watch?
Had he? He remembered telling Toby he'd look
at it, that maybe the batteries had run out,
but he couldn't recall ever hearing its strange
distorted sound again, nor seeing its glow on
his son's wrist.

He reached under the bed. There was a
plastic box under there where he'd stored a
load of Toby's toys, and as he pulled it out, he
knew he was about to be assailed by memories.
The blue click-on lid was covered with dust.

Removing the lid, he leaned it against the
bed and just stared. Inside the box was a riot
of colours and shapes, toys he remembered
and some he did not. Action figures pointed
weapons at him, remote controlled cars sat
motionless, cuddly toys huddled together in the
box's corners. He moved some toys aside and
something growled.

Ray gasped and sat back, listening to the
noise. He remembered it, a long low growl that
emanated from an alligator with a man's body.
He couldn't recall which TV program or comic
it came from, but he pictured Toby sitting on
their living room floor with this and other
figures, indulging in some unreachable battle
or scenario expressed through sound and
movement. Most of it took place in his head,
and that was gone now. When he was alive,
memories of those battles would have existed
somewhere in his child's brain. But now those
conflicts could never exist again.

The alligator fell silent and Ray delved
farther into the box. He was sad, but the
familiar crippling grief remained at bay. The
toys felt good in his hands. Some of them he
put in a pile on the carpet; others — mostly
action figures — he stood in uneven ranks on
the bed, like startled mercenaries brought
out of retirement. They'd been in hiding for
almost a year, and now they were exposed
once again, but this time there would be no
play.

They were being sorted out. It wasn't just
this box under the bed; there were toys and
books everywhere. The top of the wardrobe
was stacked with board games. Another box at
the foot of the bed held thousands of building
blocks and associated pieces — boards, ties,
small motors, wheels, batteries. A book case
beside the door was home to over a hundred
books, ranging from the first cloth book
they'd bought Toby as a baby, through picture
and pop-up books they'd read to him when
very young, to volumes he'd started to read
himself. There was a book about a talking
dragon, and one about a boy who tried to catch
a star. He'd been a good reader, one of the best
in his school class.

There were a few books that were too old
for him, but which Ray hadn't been able to
resist buying. He paused, staring at these,
because Toby would never know their stories.
He might have looked at them — he'd liked
to fan pages and scan pictures — but their
uniqueness would never be known to him, and
that brought on Ray's first tear since entering
the room.

“No,” he said. “Not now. Not yet.” He tipped
the plastic box, spilling toys across the floor.
Something bounced from his leg, and he
froze. There was the Ben 10 watch that had
broken. He picked it up and turned it in his
hand, looking for the battery compartment.
The battery was still inside. He turned the dial
that exposed different monsters, snapped the
front of the watch shut, and a small spring
tumbled out.

Ray couldn't see where the missing part had
come from, but guessed it was the reason the
watch no longer worked. It was supposed to
light up and make a noise, but now it was just
a lump of plastic . . . a lump of useless plastic,
pointless, and —

He stood and was about to throw the thing
against the wall, but then paused. The toys
on the bed watched him, and he went from
one to the next, checking each until he found
what was wrong. With some it was obvious — a
missing arm, a torn joint, a crushed head.
With others, the fault was not so noticeable,
but he always found it.

Every
toy
was
broken.
Ray
frowned,
clutching the Ben 10 watch and trying to
remember when they'd all been consigned to
the box beneath the bed. He'd thought it was
after they lost Toby, but now he wasn't so sure.
Now, he seemed to remember piling all those
broken toys in there himself, and there had
likely been an empty promise to his son that
he would fix them all soon.

But he never had mended the broken watch.

“Damn
it,”
Ray
said
softly,
gathering
the toys from the floor and adding them to
those on the bed. He made sure they were
spread evenly, none of them hiding another,
because they each deserved his attention.
A year ago, two, three, he should have given
them his attention then. But other things
had conspired, more urgent matters like what
they'd have for dinner, the latest bill that
needed paying, which movie he and Elizabeth
would watch when Toby had been tucked up
in bed. . . .

BOOK: The Thief of Broken Toys
8.55Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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